
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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-> 75 -^ 



LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE. 



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REV. A; B. SIMPSON. 




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PUBLISHED KY 

THE CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE PUB. CO. 

692 Eighth Avenue, 
New Vork. 



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Copyright, 1890, by RE^■. A. B. Simpson. 




CONTENTS. 





PAGE 


The Possibilities of Faith, 


5 


The Joy of the Lord, - 


52 


Filled with the Spirit, - 


- 99 


The Larger Life, 


139 


The Death of Self, 


- 182 


More than Conquerors, 


227 


Grace Abounding, 


- 261 


From Strength to Strength, 


301 


God's Measureless Measures, 


- 333 


Spiritual Growth, 


374 


Enlarged Work, - 


- 413 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH. 



''If thou cans't believe, all things are 
possible to him that believeth.''— Mark 
ix : 23. 

WfHESE are bold and stupendous 
4 words. They open the treasure 
house of the Eternal King to 
sinful worms, and offer to the chil- 
dren of clay the privilege of God's 
own omnipotence and all the possi- 
bihties of His infinite resources. 
Side by side these two astounding 



6 THE POSSIBILITIES OP FAITH 

declarations stand, "All things are 
possible with God; '' " All things are 
possible to him that believeth,^^ 

I. Let us consider the possibilities 
of faith : — 

1. Salvation is possible to him that 
believeth. No matter how vile the 
sin, how many or how great the 
sins, how aggravated the guilt, how 
deep the corruption, how long the 
career of impenitence and crime, it 
is everywhere and forever true, 
" He that believeth on the Son hatli 
everlasting life," ^^ Believe on the 
Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved." 
And thus alone can any soul be 
saved, for it is just as true forever, 
no matter what qualifications the 
soul may possess, whether the 



THE POSSIBILITIES O^ FAITH 7 

highest morahty or the deepest de- 
pravity, ''He that behcveth not 
shall be damned." This blessed text 
opens the gates of .Paradise and all 
the possibilities of grace to any and 
every sinner, and ' * whosoever will, 
may come, and take the Water of 
Life freely." 

2. Sanctification is possible to him 
that belie veth. ' * Inheritance among 
them that are sanctified by faith 
that is in me/' is still the inscription 
over the gates of our full inheritance. 
''Purifying our hearts by faith" is 
still the Divine process of full salva- 
tion. Thus alone can the soul be 
sanctified. It is not a work, but a 
gift of grace, and all grace must be 
by faith. It is not possible by pain- 



8 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

ful struggling ; it is not possible by 
penance and self-torture ; it is not 
possible by sickness^ suffering or 
self -crucifixion ; it is not possible by 
moral suasion, careful training, cor- 
rect teaching and perfect example ; 
it is not possible even by the dark, 
cold waters of death itself. The soul 
that dies unsanctified shall be un- 
sanctified forever. ^ ' He that is holy, 
let him be holy still : he that is 
filthy, let him be filthy still" But 
it is possible to him that belie vet h. 
It is the gift of Jesus Christ ; it is 
the incoming and ind welhng of Jesus 
Christ ; it is the interior hfe and 
divine imparting of the Holy Ghost, 
and it must be by faith alone. And it 
is possible to any soul that will be 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 9 

lieve, no matter how unholy it has 
been^ no matter how perverse it is ; 
as mean perhaps and crooked as 
Jacob, as gross as David in. his 
darkest sin, as self-confident as 
Simon Peter, as willful and self- 
righteous as Paul — it may be and 
shall be made as spotless as the Son 
of God, as holy as the holiness of 
Jesus Himself, who comes to dwell 
within, if we will only believe and 
receive. 

3. Divine Healing is possible to 
him that believeth. '^The prayer 
of faith shall save the sick," is still 
the Master's unaltered word for His 
suffering church. And this faith 
must be the faith of the receiver, 
for in the epistle it i§ saidj *'Let not 



10 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

him that wavereth think that he 
shall receive anything of the Lord." 
Stiil it is as true as when the Master 
touched the eyes of the blind men to 
whom He said it, ' ' According to your 
faith be it unto j^ou." It matters not 
how serious the disease, it may be as 
helpless as tlie cripple's who could 
not in any wise life herself up ; as 
chronic as tlie impotent man who 
lay for thirty and eight years help- 
less at the pool ; as obscure and as 
despised a case as the poor blind 
men Avho begged by the wayside 
and whom the multitude thought 
unworthy of Christ's attention, or as 
the sinful woman of Syro-Phoenicia, 
whom even the Saviour called a dog, 
and yet t ) her, as to others, the heal- 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 11 

ing came when He could say, " Great 
is thy faith ; be it unto thee even 
as thou wilt." It is not the faith 
which heals, it is the God that the 
faith touches ; but there is no other 
way of touching God except by faith, 
and therefore if we would receive His 
Almighty touch, we must believe. 

4. All power for service is possible 
to him that believeth. The gift of 
the Holy Ghost is received by faith. 
The power of the aposi les was in pro- 
portion to their faith. Stephen ' ' full 
of faith and power" could meet all the 
wisdom of Saul of Tarsus and the 
synagogue of the Cihcians. The sim- 
ple story of Barnabas is that ^' he was 
a good man and full of faith and the 
Holy Ghost and much people were 



12 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

added unto the Lord." The secret of 
effective preaching is not logic^ or 
rhetoric, or elocution, but to be able to 
say, ^^I believed and therefore have 
I spoken." The success of some 
evangelists and Christian workers is 
out of all proportion to their talent or 
capacity in any direction, but they 
have one gift which thoy faithfully 
exercise and that is expecting God to 
give them souls ; and therefore they 
ire never disappointed. The church 
Lias yet to see in the present genera- 
tion, the full possibilities of faith in 
the work of the Lord. The examples 
of a Moody and a Harrison are but 
types of what is possible for the hum- 
blest worker who with a single eye 
to the glory of Go^ and simple Mel- 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 13 

ity to the gospel of Christ will dare 
to expect the mightiest results. Both 
these examples^ perhaps the most 
marked instances of wide fruitfulness 
in the present generation, are persons 
without great natural gifts or educa- 
tional advantages and therefoiethe 
more encouraging as incentives to ihe 
work of faith. Humble toiler in the 
vineyard of the Lord, will you go 
forth to all the possibilities of faith 
in your work for Him as you realize 
the strength of your weakness and 
the might of your God, for it is *' not 
by might or by powxr but by my 
Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts." 

The day has come for God to reveal 
Himself through the very weakness 
of His instruments, and to prove oncQ 



14 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

more that He has chosen the foohsh 
things of the world to confound the 
wise, and the weak things to con- 
found the things that are mighty. 

5. All diflficulties and dangers must 
give way before the omnipotence of 
faith. By faith the walls of Jericho 
fell down after they had been com- 
passed seven days, and still the 
mightiest citadds of the adversary 
must give way before the steadfast 
and victorious march of faith. By 
faith Daniel stopped the mouths of 
lions, and was delivered, w^e are ex- 
pressly told, because he believed in 
his God. It was not his uprightness 
of life, or courageous fidelity that 
saved him, but his confidence in Je- 
hovah. Such faith has carried th© 



EHE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 15 

intrepid Arnot through the jungles 
of Africa and deUvered the heroic 
Paton from the murderous fury of 
the savages of Tanna^ and held back 
the stroke of d^ath and the threat- 
ened disaster from many of us in the 
humbler experiences of our provi- 
dential lives. Still the God of faith 
is as near, as mighty and as true as 
when He walked with the Hebrew 
children through the fire, and guard- 
ed the heroic Paul through all the 
perils of his changeful life. There is 
no difficulty too small for its exer- 
cise, and there is no crisis too terii 
ble for its triumph. Shall we go fori h 
with this shield and buckler, and 
prove all the possibilities of faith ? 
Then indeed shall we carry a charmed 



16 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

life even through the very hosts of 
Hell^ and know that v^e are immor- 
tal till our w^ork is done. 

6. All the victories of prayer are 
possible to him that believeth. 
" Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, 
believiDg, shall ye receive. " ' ' When 
ye pray believe that ye receive the 
things that ye ask and ye shall have 
them." It is not the strength or the 
length of the prayer that prevails but 
the simphcity of its confidence. It is 
the prayer of faith that claims the 
healing power of the unchanging 
Saviour. It is the prayer of faith 
that reaches the soul that no human 
hand, perhaps, can approach, and 
sometimes brings from Heaven the 
answer before the echo of the peti- 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 17 

tion has died away. Yonder in the 
city of Cleveland a broken-hearted 
wife is praying with an evangelist for 
her husband's soul. At that very 
hour an influence all unknown to 
himself is leading him into a prayer 
meeting in Chicago at noon^ and be- 
fore that prayer is ended the choirs 
of Heaven are singing over a repent- 
ant soul, and the Holy Ghost is whis- 
pering to her heart that the work is ac- 
complished, not less surely than when 
on the morrow the swift mail brings 
the glad tidings from his own hand. 
The prayer of faith has reared those 
enduring monuments on Ashley 
Down where two thousand orphan 
children are fed every day by the 
hand of God alone, in answer to the 



18 THE POSSIBILITIES OP FAlTS 

humble, believing cry of a faithful 
minister. These are but patterns of 
what God has always been ready to 
do and hindered only by His people's 
unbelief. Beloved, these possibilities 
are open to each of us. We may not 
be called to public service, or qualified 
for instructive speech, or endowed 
with wealth and influence, but to 
each of us is given the power to touch 
the hand of omnipotence and minis- 
ter at the golden altar of prevailing 
prayer. One censer only we must 
bring — the golden bowl of faith, and 
as we fill it with the burning coals of 
the Holy Spirit's fire, and the incense 
of the great High Priest, lo there will 
be silence once again in Heaven, as 
God hushes the universe to listen, 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 19 

and then the hving fire will be poured 
out upon the earth in the mighty 
forces of providence and grace by 
which the kingdom of our Lord is to 
be ushered in. 

Y. All peace and joy are possible to 
him that believeth. The apostle's 
prayer for the Eomans is that the 
God of hope shall fill them with all 
joy and peace in believing. It is 
God's will and purpose that the un- 
believing soul shall be an unhappy 
soul, and that he shall be kept in per- 
fect peace whose mind is stayed on 
God and trusting in Him. Would 
you then know the peace that passeth 
all understanding ? Be careful for 
nothing and steadfastly believe that 
the Lord is at hand, supreme above 



20 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

every circumstance, and causing all 
things to ^vork together for good to 
them that love Him. Would you be 
happy in the darkest hour? Then 
trust in the Lord and stay yourself 
upon your God. Would you have the 
perennial overflowings of joy ? Then 
learn to say ^^ Though now we see 
Him not, yet believing we rejoice with 
joy unspeakable and full of glory." 
The joy of mere paroxysmal emotion 
is like the cut flower of a brief win- 
ter's day, separated from the root 
and w^ithering before another sun 
goes down. The joy of faith is the 
fruit and perpetual bloom that covers 
the living tree, or springs from the 
rooted plant in the watered garden. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 21 

"The men of faith have found 

Glory bf^gin below — 
Celestial fruit on hostile ground 

From faith and hope may grow." 

8. The evangelization of the world 
is to be given to faith. The most 
successful missionary operations of 
to-day are sustained wholly through 
faith in God and the power of prayer. 
If China is to be evangehzed in the 
present centuiy it will be due to the 
faith of one humble missionary who 
has dared to attempt great things for 
God and to expect great things from 
Him. There is no field for faith 
so vast and so sublime as the mis- 
sion field to-day, and there is no 
limit to the possibilities w^hich faith 
may claim. Oh that some of us 



22 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

may rise to the magnitude of this 
great opportunity and become work- 
ers together with God for the great- 
est achievement of all the Christian 
centuries. 

9. The Lord's coming will doubt- 
less be given at last to faith. There 
will be a generation who shall say, 
''Lo! this is our God, we have 
waited for Him." As yet it is our 
blessed hope but it will some day be- 
come more. And reading both upon 
earth and sky the tokens of His 
coming, His waiting bride shall 
hear the glad cry, ^^The marriage 
of the Lamb is come." To Sime( n 
of old it was made known that* he 
should see the Lord's Christ, and to 
some shall be given in the last times 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH ' 2B 

the Morning Star that shall precede 
the Millennial dawn. The Lord help 
us so to understand our times and 
the work the Master expects of us to 
prepare His coming, that we shall be 
permitted to share its glorious recom- 
pense of faith and even hasten that 
joyful day. 

10. But beyond all that has been 
said this promise means that all 
things are possible to him that be- 
heveih. It is possible to have any 
or even many of the adiievdnents 
^pecitied and yet miss the all things 
of God's highest will. The meaning 
of this promise in i\s fulness is that 
faith may claim a complete life, a 
blessing from which nothing shall 
be lacking, a finished service, and a 



24 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

crown from which no jewel of recom- 
pense shall be found wanting. There 
are lives which are not wholly lost 
and yet are not saved to 1 he utter- 
most. There are rainbows whose 
arch is broken but there is a rain- 
bow round about the throne whose 
perfect circle is the type of a com- 
pleted record and an infinite reward. 
Many of us are coming short of all 
that God has had in His highest 
thought for us. When the king of 
Israel stood by the bedside of the 
dying prophet of the Lord, Elisha 
put his hand upon the hands of 
Joash and helped him shoot the 
arrows which were symbolic of faith 
and victory ; but then the prophet 
required that the king should follow 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 25 

up this act of mutual faith by a 
more individual expression of the 
measure of his own expectation. 
Alas^ like most of us, his faith evap- 
orated long before its needed work 
was done. He smote thrice upon 
the ground and then he stayed. Too 
late for him to recover his lost bless- 
ing, the grieved and angry prophet 
upbraided him for his negligence 
and narrowness of heart, and told 
him sorrowfully that his blessing 
should be limited according to the 
measure of his own little faith. 
Never shall I forget the solemnity 
with which God brought this pas- 
sage to my soul in a crisis of my 
life, and asked how much I would 
take from him and how little would 



26 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

satisfy my faith. Thank God he en- 
abled me lo say with a bursting 
hearty ^^ nothing less than all thy 
highest thought and will^ even the 
all things of faith's greatest possi- 
bilities." The Lord help us to look 
forward ever to the time when all 
these opportunities shall be passing 
from our grasp, and to live each day 
under the power of those holy as- 
pirations whose true value we shall 
then be able to understand, and ever- 
more to say with Him who cherished 
the same lofty ambition, ^^I count 
not my life dear unto myself that I 
may finish my course with joy." 
Beloved, are you missing any thing 
out of your life, your one precious^ 
laarrow span of earthly opportunity, 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 27 

the pivot on which eternity revolves, 
the one eternal possibihty that never 
will return again ? God is waiting 
to give you all, and all things are 
possible to him that believeth. 

II. The reasonableness of faith. 
Why should God make all things 
dependent upon our faith. 

1. Because the ruin of the race 
began with the loss of faith and its 
recovery must come through the 
exercise of faith. The poison Satan 
injected into the blood of Eve was a 
question of God's faithfulness, and 
the one prescription what the Gos- 
pel gives to unsaved sinners is, ^^ Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
thou shalt be saved." 

2, Faith is the law of Christianity, 



28 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

the vital principle of the Gospel dis- 
pensation The law of faith the apos- 
tle calls it in distinction from the 
law of works. The Lord Jesus ex- 
pressed it in the simple formula 
which has become the standard of 
answered prayers and every blessing 
that we receive through the name of 
Jesus. God is therefore bound to act 
according to our faith and also ac- 
cording to our unbelief. 

3. Faith is the only way known 
to us by which we can accept a gift 
from God, and inasmuch as all the 
blessings of the Gospel are the gifts 
of grace, they must come to us 
through faith and in the measure of 
our faith, if they come at all. 

4r, Faith is necessary as a subjective 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 39 

influence to prepare bur own hearts 
for the reception of God and His 
grace. How can the Father com- 
municate His love to a timid, trem- 
bling heart. How^ can God come near 
to a frightened child ? I have seen 
a little bird die of terror in my hand, 
when I intended it no harm but 
tried in vain to caress it and win its 
love. And so the individual heart 
without faith would die in the pres- 
ence of God in absolute terror, and 
be unable to receive the overflowing 
love of the Father which it could not 
understand. 

5. Faith is an actual spiritual 
force. It is no doubt one of the 
attributes of God Himself. We 
find it exemplified in Jesus in 



30 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

all His miracles. He explains to 
His disciples that it was the very 
power by which He withered the 
fig tree and the power by which 
they could overcome and dissolve 
the mightiest obstacles in their way. 
There is no doubt that while the 
soul is exercising through the power 
of God the faith that commands 
what God commands, that a mighty 
force is operating at that very mo- 
ment upon the obstacle, a force as 
real as the currents of electricity or 
the power of dynamite. God has 
really put into our hands one of His 
own implements of omnipotence and 
permitted us to use it in the name of 
Jesus according to His will and for 
the establishment of His Kingdom, 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 31 

6. The pre-eminent reason why 
God requires faith, is because faith 
is the only way through which God 
Himself can have absolute room to 
work, for faith is just that colorless 
and simple attitude by which man 
ceases from his own works and 
enters into the w^ork of God. It is 
the difference between the human 
and the divine, the natural and the 
supernatural. The reason therefore 
why faith is so mighty and indeed 
omnipotent is that it just makes way 
for the omnipotence of God. There- 
fore the two sentences are strangely 
and exactly parallel. ^'AU things are 
possible with God, " ' 'all thing are pos- 
sible to him that belie veth." The 
very same power is possessed by 



32 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

God and him that beheveth and the 
reason is that the latter is lost in, 

and wholly indentified with, the 
former. How shall we illustrate the 
mighty distance between the earthly 
and the heavenly, the human and 
the divine, the finite and the infinite. 
Some one has said, take the strongest 
piece of artillery, load it to the muz- 
zle with powder or dynamite, put in 
it the most perfect steel ball, be sure 
you have all the latest improvements 
in advance, then fire it, and your 
bullet will sweep through space at 
the rate of six hundred feet in a 
second. But in that second let God^ 
with a single flash of light and with- 
out an effort or a sound, propel a 
ray from yonder sun or star or mid^ 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 33 

night lamp, and it will fly six hun- 
dred thousand miles. Six hundred 
feet, six hundred thousand miles ! 
This is a feeble figure of the differ- 
ence between the human and the 
divine. That ponderous gun with 
its slow but destructive power is a 
type of man's works. That gentle 
sunbeam and light-beam with its 
silent, swift, beneficent ministry is 
a type of God's infinite resources. 
This is the world into which faith 
introduces us. Surrendering its own 
insufiiciency it links itself with the 
all-sufficiency of God, and goes forth 
triumphantly exclaiming, ^^I can do 
all things through Christ who 
strengtheneth me,*' while approving 
Heaven echoes back '^All things 



34 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

are possible to Him that believ- 
eth.'' 

III. The possibihty of faith. '' If 
thou canst, beheve.'' 

1. Of course we need scarcely say 
that faith is dependent upon obedi- 
ence and rightness of heart and life. 
We cannot trust God in the face of 
willful sin, and even an unsanctified 
state is fatal to any high degree of 
faith, for the carnal heart is not the 
soil in which it can grow, but it is 
the fruit of the Spirit, and is hin- 
dered by the weeds of sin and 
willful indulgence. The reason that 
a great many Christians have so little 
faith is because they are living in 
the world and in themselves, and 
separated in so large a part of their 



THE POSSIBILITIES O^ FAITH 35 

life from God and holiness. When 
the Lick Observatory was built on the 
Pacific coast, it was necessary to go 
above the valleys and lowlands of 
the coast, where the fogs and mists 
hung heavily over the land,. and se- 
lect a site on the top of Mount 
Hamilton, above the fogs and 
vapors of the ground, and in 
clear, unobstructed view of the 
heavens. So faith requires for its 
heavenly vision, the highlands of 
holiness and separation, and the 
clear, pure sky of a consecrated 
hfe. 

Beloved, may you find in this the 
explanation of many of your doubts 
and fears, that your plane is too low, 
your heart is too mixed, and your 



86 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

life is too near this '' present evil 
world.'' 

2. Faith is hindered by the weak 
and unscriptural way in which so 
many excuse their unbelief and 
lightly think and speak of the sin of 
doubting Grod. If we would have 
strong faith we raust recognize it as 
an imperative and sacred obligation, 
and steadfastly and firmly believe 
God, and refuse ever to doubt Him. 
Let us not say we cannot believe. It 
is true, we cannot of ourselves, but 
all that God also provides, and He 
has provided for us the power to be- 
lieve if we will choose to do so. Let 
us then no more condone and palliate 
our doubts as harmless infirmities 
and sad misfortunes, but ^Hake heed 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 37 

lest there be in any of us an evil 
heart of unbelief in departing from 
the living God." 

3. Faith is hindered by reliance 
upon human wisdom, whether our 
own or the wisdom of others. The 
devil's first bait to Eve was an offer 
of wisdom, and for this she sold her 
faith. '^Ye shall be as gods," he 
said, '^knovving good and evil," and 
from the hour she began to know 
she ceased to trust. It was the spies 
that lost the land of promise to Is- 
rael of old. It was their foolish propo- 
sition to search out the land, and find 
out by investigation whether God 
had told the truth or not, that led to 
the awful out-break of unbelief that 
shut the doors of Canaan to a whole 



38 THE POSSIBILITIES OP FAITH 

generation. It is very significant 
that the names of these spies are 
nearly all suggestive of human wis- 
dom, greatness and fame. And so 
in the days of Christ, it was the 
bondage of the Jews to the traditions 
of the fathers and the opinions of 
men, that kept them back from re- 
ceiving Him. ' ' How can ye believe, " 
He asked, ^^ which receive honor 
from men, and seek not that which 
cometh from God only ?" This,- to- 
day, has much to do with the limita- 
tions of the church's faith. The 
Bible is measured by human criti- 
cism, and the promises of God are 
weighed in the balance of natural 
probability and human reason. Our 
own wisdom is just as dangerous if 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 39 

it take the place of God's simple 
word, and therefore, if we would 
'Hrust the Lord with all our heart," 
we must ^4ean not to our own un- 
derstanding. " 

4. Self-sufficiency and dependence 
on our strength is also a hindrance to 
our faith. 

God, therefore, has to reduce us to 
helplessness before we can have 
much trust in Him. The hour of 
His mightiest interposition is usually 
the time of our greatest extremity. 

A secular weekly tells the story of 
a little fellow whose experience re- 
presents a good many older people. 
He had reached that epoch in a boy's 
life when he gets his first pants, and 
the uplift unsettled his spiritual equi- 



40 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

librium. Hitherto he had been a de- 
vout httle Christian and usually 
joined his little sister every morning 
in asking the Lord's help and bless- 
ing for the day, but this morning 
when he looked at his new pants, and 
telt himself a man, he stopped his 
little sister as she began to pray for 
him as usual, ^^Lord Jesus, take care 
of Freddie to-day, and keep him from 
harm," and like poor Simon Peter, in 
his own self-sufficiency he cried out, 
" No, Jennie, don't say that ; Freddie 
can take care of himself now. " The 
little saint was shocked and fright- 
ened, but knew not what to do. And 
so the day began, but before noon 
they both climbed up into a cherry 
tree and while reaching out for the 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 41 

templing fruit, Freddie went head 
foremost down into an angle 
between the tree and the fence, 
and with all his desperate struggles 
and his frightened sister's, he was 
utterly unable to extricate ' himself, 
and at last he looked up to Jennie 
with a look of mingled shame and 
intelligence and said, ''Jennie, pray; 
Freddie can't take care of himself 
after all." Just then a strong man 
was coming along the road and the 
answer to their prayer quickly came 
as the sturdy arms in a few minutes 
had taken down the fence and Fred- 
die was free, and went forth a lesson 
for life, to walk like Simon Peter, 
with downward head and humble 



42 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

trust in a strength and care more 
mighty than his own. 

Truly this is the soil of faith ! 
Wisely said Habakkuk^ centuries 
ago, as he contrasted pride and confi- 
fidence, " His soul which is lifted up 
is not upright in him ; but the just 
shall live by faith." 

Beloved, has God brought you to 
the end of your strength? Eejoice 
and be exceeding glad, for it is the 
beginning cf His Omnipotence, if 
faith will but fall into His mighty 
arms and cry like those of old, ^^Lord, 
it is nothing with Thee to help by 
many or with those who have no 
power. Help us Lord, for in Thy 
Name we go against this great multi- 
tude." 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 413 

5. Faith is hindered by sight and 
sense^ and our foohsh dependence 
upon external evidences. 

The very evidence in which we 
must live and grow is the unseen, 
and therefore all outward things 
must be withdrawn before we can 
truly believe ; and as we look not at 
the things which are seen but on the 
things which are not seen^ they grow 
real, more real than the things of 
sense and then God makes them real 
in actual accomplishment. But faith 
must first step out into the great un- 
known, and walk upon the water to 
go to Jesus, nay, walk upon the air ; 
but where was something only void 
it will find the rock beneath, like 
the traveler in the Alps who had 



4:4: THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

reached the end of the mountain 
path as it suddenly disappeared be- 
neath a great mass of ice and snow 
and became a subterranean torrent, 
while the mountain rose sternly in 
front and the miles of desolation 
which he had traveled lay behind. 
What should he do ? Suddenly his 
guide exclaimed, ^^ Follow me ! " and 
plunged into the descending torrent 
and then disappeared from his view 
under the great mountain which it 
tunnelled. It was an awful venture, 
but he must either follow or die, and 
plunging in, there was a sudden 
shock, and the whirl of waters and ^ 
blackness of darkness, and then a 
burst of light, and he was lying on 
the banks of a quiet stream on tliQ 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 45 

other side of the mountain, in the 
sweet valley below. The unseen way 
had led to life and light. 

So faith still walks in paths of 
mystery oft-times, but God will al- 
ways make it plain. Is not this the 
hindrance to your faith that you hesi- 
tate to believe before you venture 
upon the naked word of promise ? 
Your faith alone is the substance of 
things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen. God help us to walk 
by faith and not by sight ! 

Therefore God has to train us in 
the way of faith by difficulties, trials, 
and seeming refusals, until like the 
Syro-Phoenician woman, we simply 
trust on and refuse to be refused. 
He is always waiting to recompensQ 



46 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

our trust by the glad words, ''Great 
is thy faith ! Be it unto thee even as 
thou wilt." 

6. Finally, this faith is hindered most 
of all by what we call " our faith," 
and our fruitless struggles to work 
out a faith which after all is but a 
make-believe and a desperate trying 
to trust Grod, which must ever come 
short of His vast and glorious prom- 
ises. The truth is that the only faith 
that i^ equal to the stupendous 
promises of God and the measureless 
needs of our life, is ''the faith of 
God " Himself, the very trust 
which He will breathe into the 
heart which intelligently expects 
Him as its power to believe, as well 
as its power to love, obey, or per- 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 4T 

form any other exercise of the new 
hfe. 

Blessed be His name ! He has not 
given us a chain which reaches with- 
in a single link of our poor helpless 
heart, but that one last link is fatal 
to all the chain. Nay, the last link, 
the one that fastens on the human 
side is as divine as the link that binds 
the chain of promise to His Throne 
of promise in the heavens. ''Have 
the faith of God," is His great com- 
mand. ''I live by the faith of the 
Son of God " is the victorious testi- 
mony of one who had proved it true. 

Beloved, in the light of this great 
provision, listen to the mighty 
promise now, and in His faith rise to 
claim, ''If thou canst, believe. All 



48 THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 

things are possible to him that be- 
heveth/' and cry, '^Lord, I beheTe, 
nay, not I, but Thou ! Help Thou my 
unbelief." 

And now, beloved, this mighty en- 
gine of spiritual power is placed in 
our hands by Omnipotent love. Shall 
we claim, and by the help of God, 
rise to its utmost possibilities, and 
shall we from this hour turn it, Tke 
a heavenly weapon, upon the field of 
Christian life and conflict, and use 
it for all to which God has called 
us in the great conflicts of the age 
and for the Kingdom of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ ? Our L^t has 
fallen upon momentous times ; the 
last decade of this stupendous century 
has just begun, and it finds the 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 49 

Church of God awaking to the great- 
est campaign of the Christian cen« 
turies^ the evangehzation of the 
world, with a view to the preparation 
for our Lord's immediate coming. 
What a glorious possibility ! It is one 
of the possibilities of faith. 

Last night as I sat at my open 
window, far into the night watches, 
from one of the cottages yonder, I 
heard the voice of prayer go forth all 
night long. It was a ceasless and 
mighty cry that the mighty God 
would work with all His power and 
glory, and though the same words 
were oft repeated by the same voice, 
it never seemed to grow monotous, 
for there was so much that language 
could not express in that prayer that 



50 THE POSSIBILITIES O^ FAITH 

it touched my heart with tenderness 
and solemnity, and seemed like a 
prophecy of that which I trust is to 
go forth from this mighty convoca- 
tion and be caught up by all the 
world until it shall be answered by 
the voices of heaven above, proclaim- 
ing, ''The kingdoms of this world 
have become the kingdom of our 
Lord and of His Christ. Alleluia ! 
The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." 
Oh, shall we take this engine of 
omnipotence, the prayer of faith, 
and turn it toward the heavens, and 
turn it upon the earth, and turn it 
against every foe, until we shall find 
it wholly true, ''AH things are 
possible to him that believeth." 
It has been proposed that we should 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF FAITH 51 

f orm^ this day, a Prayer Alliance, for 
the evangelization of the world during 
this present century, and the speedy 
coming of our Lord Jesus. Beloved, 
can there be a grander opportunity 
for the practical application of this 
great theme, and shall we not with 
one heart, join hands in believing 
prayer, around the world, until the 
happy day when we shall join hands 
once more around the Millenial 
Throne and praise Him for the glo- 
rious fulfillment ? 



THE JOY OF THE LORD. 



"The Joy of the Lord is your strength." 
Neh. viii; 10. 

pHERE is no more pointed differ- 
ence between Christianity and all 
other religions than the element .of 
joyfulness. 

The natural countenance of heath- 
enism is gloomy, and often profoundly 
sad. The true expression of a conse- 
crated face is radianc<^ and gladness. 
True, this is not always realized as 
it ought to be, but when the Holy 
Spirit shines in the consecrated 
heart, the face will reflect its glory, 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 53 

and, like Stephen's, be often like the 
face of an angel. The reporter of a 
weekly paper once remarked as he 
described the services of one of our 
happy conventions, ^' one thing that 
characteiized all the faces was their 
wondrous joyousness." Surely this 
ought to be ever true ! Look at those 
two sisters, born of one mother, 
rocked in one cradle, educated in one 
school, yet parted now by a distance 
far greater than leagues can meas- 
ure. The younger sister is rich, 
prosperous, admired by a wide circle 
of friends, loved by every member 
of her family, and indulged in every 
gratification that social position or 
ample wealth can procure. The 
other is poor ; her life is a struggle 



64 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

with circumstances, her time i^ 
crowded with toil and care ; her 
dearest friends often misunderstand 
her religious attitude, and rudely 
blame her for the very things which 
are the highest services and sacri- 
fices of her love. And yet her face 
shines with a deep^ transparent joy, 
compared with which the other is 
dull and tame. The daughter of 
wealth and prosperity has got so 
used to her surroundings that they 
are no more to her than the humble 
circumstances of the other are to 
her. External luxuries have palled 
her appetite long ago, and no deeper 
springs have opened in her empty 
heart. Look at her when circum- 
stances change ! She has no other 



The joy of the lord 5§ 

resources. Bereavement and death 
find her without consolation, and 
when she loses earth she loses all she 
had, and the parting is the more ter- 
rible in proportion to the pleasure of 
the possession. But the other has 
an inner source of peace and happi- 
ness that external vicissitudes can- 
not affect. Her trials throw her 
more wholly upon that hidden source 
of joy, and when all else is over- 
shadowed with darkness, you may 
often see her face, as it were the 
face of an angel, and when sobs and 
tears are heard on every side, around 
h^r dying couch, her voice is melo- 
dious with praici^e and her face is 
shining with the reflected glory of 
the everlasting day. 



56 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

Why should it not be so ? ^^ God is 
Light and in Him is no darkness at 
all." The blessed God must be the 
source of blessedness. His Beloved 
Son, our Pattern and our Saviour, is 
the Prince of Peace, and the Royal 
Bridegroom, whom God ^^hath an- 
ointed with the oil of gladness above 
His fellows," and surely His salva- 
tion should be a glad salvation ; His 
touch should bring joy and sunshine, 
and they who f oUow^ Him should be 
true to His own ideal of that happy 
company who '^ shall come to Zion 
with songs and everlasting joy ; they 
shall obtain joy and gladness, and 
sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 
As we look over the earth we find 
that God has put beauty and glad- 



THE JOY OF THE LOED 57 

ness wherever He can. He has made 
us to be happy, and He has sent re- 
demption to restore and consummate 
our joy, and so His great salvation is 
inseparably linked with a rejoicing 
spirit. True, it can stoop to sorrow ; 
it will enter the saddest home and 
the darkest midnight, but it cannot 
dwell with gloom. It must banish 
sorrow as well as sin, and live in the 
light of joy. 

And so we must give up trying to 
combine religion and melancholy, for 
Christ will have none but a happy 
people. Even old Judaism robed it- 
self in bridal garments whenever it 
could and went forth with songs of 
rejoicing. Under the Mosaic law 
there was a constant succession of 



58 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

feasts, and the whole na.ion was re- 
quired every little while to go on a 
great religious picnic to keep them 
from settling down into selfishness 
and melancholy. And in the closing 
festival of the sacred year they w^ere 
required to spend an entire week in 
the most romantic and picturesque 
religious rejoicings, dwelhng in rus- 
tic booths and uniting in festal ser- 
vices and sacred songs and ceremo- 
nies, w^hich must have formed a grand 
and impressive spectacle of national 
rejoicing. 

It was this Feast of Tabernacles 
that Nehemiah and the people were 
now observing, yet, like some of us, 
they had come with long faces, and 
thought it becoming to celebrate the 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 59 

occasion by a few appropriate tears, 
as they thought of the desolations of 
Zion which had just been removed 
and restored. But Nehemiah told 
them that it was no time for mourn- 
ings simply because it was a holy day, 
and holinesfe and tears did not go 
well together ; that the sorrows were 
past, and therefore there was no 
cause for mourning any longer, but 
this was a day for gladness and 
praise, and the spirit of praise was 
necessary in order even to their own 
preparation and strength for the 
tasks in which they were engaged ; 
^' for, the joy of the Lord," he de- 
clares, '^ is your strength.-' 

1. This is true of us also, even in 
eonnection with the ordinary duties 



60 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

of daily life. How much one can do 
when the heart is light and free, and 
how long and heavy the easiest task 
when it is irksome ! That mother 
can toil half the night, that father 
can swxat all the day, for the joy of 
knowing that it is for the child of 
his love. Listen to the words of the 
sailors as they heave their heavy 
loads into the hold of yonder vessel 
with their ringing chorus sometimes 
of two syllables ; bat if it is only Ho- 
Hay, they sing it and they sing it in 
unison, and the great packages 
seem like feathers in their hands. 
Look at the soldiers as they march 
over the long tramp of many 
miles ! But the beat of the drum 
or the chorus of their battle 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 61 

songs lighten up all the toil of the 
way. 

Quaint old John Bunyan puts it 
happily when he tells us how he 
wrote the Pilgrim's Progress in his 
old Bedford dungeon. ''So I was 
had home to prison/' he goes on to 
say, ^^and I sat me down and wrote 
and wrote, because joy did make me 
write." The old dungeon with its 
stinted rays of light, its clumsy 
table, its wooden stool, its pallet of 
straw, was heaven to him because the 
joy of the pilgrim and the pilgrim's 
home and the pilgrim's story were 
bursting in his happy heart. Oh, 
how we need this joy amid the plod 
and the drudgery of the one hundred 
and forty four hours of every week, 



62 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

in the factory, the shop, over the 
counter, in the kitchen, at the desk, 
on the street, on the farm, and we 
may add, in what is often the harder 
places of pubhc hfe, and the weary 
monotony of pubhcity, and the great 
heartless noisy world ! But, thank 
God ! circumstances will make little 
difference where the everlasting 
spings are bursting from the deep 
well of His joy in the heart. 

The joy of the Lord is our strength for 
life's burdens, 
And gives to each duty a heavenly zest ; 
It will set to sweet music the task of the 
toiler, 
And soften the couch of the laborer's rest. 

David has beautifully expressed 
this blending of common life with 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 63 

heavenly gladness in one of the 
psalms, where he says, ^^Thy stat- 
utes have been my songs in the 
house of my pilgrimage." Statutes 
arc just precepts of daily duty and 
David enjoyed them by setting them 
to music and translating them to 
ceaseless praise. This, in a w^ord, is the 
meaning of the one hundred and 
nineteenth psalm. It is all about 
duty, and yet it is the most ex- 
quisitely constructed in the Hebrew 
Psalter. As it has been well said, 
it is duty set to music. 

This is the way to make duty easy 
and acceptable to God. I have 
known a servant girl whose life was 
intolerable, and whose mistress was 
regarded as a petty tyrant, become 



64 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

SO happy in the same home and with 
the same woman after she received 
the baptism of the Holy Spirit 
that she would not have exchanged 
her place for any other, and her 
mistress actually came to her to ask 
what had happened, and became an 
earnest inquirer through her beauti- 
ful transformation. 

Beloved, let us take the joy of the 
Lord into the dark places and the 
hard places and the low places, and 
the dusty, grimy streets and lanes 
of life ! Let us plant the flowers 
around the little cottage as well as 
the great mansion ! Let us have 
the song of the birds along the way- 
side, and even in the night, as well 
as in the gilded cage of the drawing- 



THE JOY OF THE LORD Go 

room and in the broad sunshine of 
the day ! Let us rejoice in the hght 
evermore and go through the path- 
ways of common hfe so filled with 
the Spirit that hke men intoxicated 
with the wine of heaven, we shall be 
heard ^^ speaking to ourselves in 
psalms and hymns and spiritual 
songs, singing with grace in our 
hearts to the Lord," and then it shall 
be true, ^^ Whatsoever we do in word 
or deed," we shall ^^do all in the 
name of the Lord Jesus giving 
thanks unto Grod by Him." 

2. The joy of the Lord is ou: 
strength for the trials of life. There 
are two ways of bearing a trial ; the 
one is the spirit of stoical endur- 
ance and the other through the 



66 The joy of I^he lord 

counteracting forces of a holy and 
victorious joy. It was thus that 
Christ endured the cross for the joy 
that was set before Ilim, and then 
He could despise the shame and not 
oven allow the smell of fire to re- 
main upon His garments. We read 
in the first chapter of Colossians the 
prayer of the apostle for a company 
of saints who had already reached 
such a measure of holiness that they 
were made partakers of the inher- 
itance of the saints in light ; but 
there was something higher and bet- 
ter for them^ namely^ that they 
should be ''strengthened according 
to His glorious power unto all pa- 
tience and longsuffering with joyful- 
ness." ''Patience" to endure the 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 67 

trials that come from the hand of 
God, and ^' longsuffering'Ho endure 
those which come from men, and 
both to le endured with real joyful- 
ness. In fact, there is nothing to 
endure when the heart is full of joy. 
It lifts us wholly above the trial, and 
we do not realize that we are being 
afflicted or w^ronged. The blessed- 
ness of true self-sacrifice is in being 
so filled with God that we will not 
have any sacrifice. What luxury of 
grace it is thus to be lifted above all 
that could even try the heart ! The 
rocks are not taken from the bottom 
of the stream, but the blessed tides 
rise so high that the ships sail far 
above them in i he current of God's 
great joy. And so the apostle ex- 



68 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

plains his self-sacrifices for the Phil- 
ippians, ^Though I be offered on the 
sacrifice and service of your faith, I 
joy and rejoice with you all." 

The Hebrew Christians were con- 
gratulated that they had been en- 
abled to take ^'joyfully the spoiling 
of their goods." This is not a very 
common experience. Some good 
women lose their sanctification over 
a set of smashed dishes by a careless 
servant, or the spilling of coffee over 
the new tablecloth or dress, or the 
spots on the little dresses of heedless 
children ; and some men get very 
angry over the mistakes or failures 
of employes or servants that injure 
their business or lose large sums of 
money. 



THE JOY OP^THE LORD 69 

Sir Isaac Newton once lost all the 
calculations of twenty-five years by 
the burning of ^ a lot of papers 
through the carelessness of a little 
dog, and the world remembers him 
with more admiration than for all 
his discoveries because ^he simply 
answered, ' ' Poor thing ! you little 
know the mischief you have done." 

The joy of the Lord always counts 
on something better than we lose, 
and remembers that there is one 
above who is the great Eecompenser 
and Restorer, and will give a thou- 
sand times more bye-and-bye for one 
victory of patience and love than all 
the world is worth to-day. 

Yes, the joy of the Lord is our strength for 
hfe's trials, 



70 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

And lifts the crushed heart above sorrow 

and care, 
Like the nightingale's song, it can sing in 

the darkness, 
And rejoice when the fig tree is withered 

and bare. 

3. The joy of the Lord is our 
strength for temptation. " Count it 
all joy/' James says^ '^ when ye fall 
into divers temptations." One rea- 
son for this is because it is the best 
way to meet them. The devil al- 
ways gets the best of a melancholy 
soul. Despondency will always 
bring surrender. Satan is so little 
used to joy in his own home that a 
happy face always scares him away. 
Amalek got hold of the hindmost of 
Israel's camp, the discouraged ones 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 71 

who were dragging behind and fret- 
ting about the hot weather and the 
hard road they had to travel. Such 
people always find the way harder 
before they get through. The fiery 
serpents, which w^ere the devil's 
scouts, stung the murmuring multi- 
tudes, and it was an upward look to 
the brazen serpent that healed them. 
Jehoshaphat's armies marched to 
battle and victory with shouts of 
faith and songs of praise, and so 
still the joy of the Lord is the best 
equipment for the great confiict. 
But the apostle also means, no doubt, 
that temptation is no cause for de- 
spondency, but rather a great oppor- 
tunity of spiritual progress. It is 
the proving of our armor and an 



72 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

evident token that the devil sees 
something in us worth trying to 
steal, and vve may be very sure 
where the army of the enemy is en- 
camped there the army of the Lord 
is also near. ' ' The trying of our faith 
worketh patience and let patience 
have her perfect wojk/' Let us go 
through all the discipline and learn 
all that it has to teach us, and 
'^ when we are tried we shall receive 
the crown of life which the Lord has 
promised to them that love Him." 

Let us then go f orih into the con- 
flicts which await us without a fear 
or cloud, and when we cannot feel 
the joy, but ^^are in heaviness 
through manifold temptations," let 
us ^^count it all joy," and say, ^^I will 



THE JOY OF THE LORD Y3 

rejoice in the Lord, and I will be joy- 
ful in my God." 

The joy of the Lord is our strength for 
temptation, ^ 

And counts it the testing of patience and 
grace ; 
1 1 marches to battle with shouts of salva- 
tion, 
And rides o'er its foes in the chariots of 
praise. 

4. The joy of the Lord is our 
strength for the body. '*'A merry 
heart doeth good like a medicine." 
This is the divine prescription for a 
weak body. And so on the other 
hand, despondency and depression 
of spirits are the cause of nervous- 
ness, head-ache, heartbreak, and 
low physical vitality. A word of 



Y4 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

cheer and an impulse of hope and 
gladness will often break the power 
of disease. 

I remember a dying man whom I 
"visited in the earliest years of my 
ministry, who was given up by his 
physicians and pronounced in a dy- 
ing condition, so that they gave up 
the case and expected his death dur- 
ing the night. But as I visited him, 
as I supposed for the last time, and 
tenderly led him to the Saviour, and 
as he accepte<l the gospel and be- 
came filled with the peace of God 
and the joy of salvation, there came 
upon him such a baptism of glory 
and such an inspiration of the very 
rapture of heaven, that he kept us 
for hours beside his bed as he shouted 



TBE JOY OF THE LORD ^5 

and sung, what we all believed to 
be the beginning of the songs of 
heaven^ and we bad hiui farewell 
long after midnight, fully expecting 
that our next meeting would be 
above. But so mighty was the up- 
lift in fchat soul that his body, un- 
consciously to himself, threw off the 
power of disease, and the next morn- 
ing he was convalescent, to the 
amazement of his physicians, and 
in a f evr days entirely well. I knew 
nothing, at that time, of Divine 
Healing, but simply witnessed with 
astonishment and delight, the Divine 
joy to heal disease. Many a time 
since have I seen the healing and the 
gladness of Jesus come together to 
the soul and body, and the night of 



76 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

weeping turned into a morning of 
joy. Many a time have I seen the 
darkly clouded and diseased brain 
lighted up with the joy of the Lord, 
and saved from insanity by a baptism 
of holy gladness. 

It is true there is a deeper cause 
and a diviner power than the mere 
natural influence of joy. Incurable 
disease can only yield to the actual 
touch of Divine omnipotence, but 
joy is the channel through which 
the healing waters flow, and the 
overflow of the life of Christ in both 
soul and body. If you would live above 
your physical conditions, if you would 
renew your strength continually and 
^^ mount up on wings as eagles, and 
run and not be weary, and walk and 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 77 

not faint/' if you would carry in 
your veins the exhilaration and zest 
of unwearied youth and freshness 
if -you would know^ even here, in all 
its fulness, the foretaste of the res- 
urrection life in your body, if you 
would be armed against the devil's 
shafts of infirmity and pain, and 
throw off his arrows upon your body 
as the heated iron repels the water 
which will not lie upon it, then, be- 
loved, ^* Rejoice, in the Lord always, 
and again I say, Eejoice." 

To return to our figure — the hum- 
blest housewife knows that water 
cannot rest upon a red-hot stove- 
cover, but leaps and dances over it 
in consternation, and flies off m ex- 
plosions of helpless effervescence. 



78 THE JOY OP THE LORD 

So the devil will try in vain to pour 
cold water upon your life and work, 
and even your frame, if you keep 
ever in the white heat of heavenly 
joy. 

6. The joy of the Lord is our 
strength for service and testimony. 
It makes all our work easy and de- 
lightful. It gives a perpetual spring 
in the hardest fields of Christian 
service. It goes with the city mis- 
sionary and the all-night worker in 
the dives and slums, and takes away 
the natural shrinking from the de- 
graded and unclean, the horror of 
filth and vermin, the fear of violent 
and wicked men and all the repul- 
siveness and hideousness of the sur- 
rounding scenes; and it makes the 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 79 

work, that naturally would be re- 
volting, a perfect fascination, and 
enables the consecrated heart to say, 
^^None of these things move me, 
neither count I my life dear unto 
me that I may finish my course with 
joy, and the ministry which I have 
received of the Lord Jesus to testify 
cf the gospel of the grace of God." 

Not only does it give a constrain- 
ing motive to our service, but it also 
gives it a divine effectiveness and 
power. It illuminates the face with 
the light of heaven, and melts the 
voice with accents of tenderness and 
love. It gives our words a weight 
and winning power which men can- 
not gainsay. They know that we 
possess a secret to which they are 



80 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

strangers, and our gladness awakens 
their longing to share our joy. A 
shining face and radiant spirit are 
worth a ton of logic, rhetoric and 
elocution. A poor crippled saint, 
standing up in a meeting and tell- 
ing what God hath done for her soul, 
with a face divinely beautiful in all 
its homeliness, wall bring more souls 
to Christ than the eloquence of a 
dozen college graduates without the 
joy of the Lord. 

A scholarly minister once gave a 
course of lectures on the " Evidences 
of Christianity," for the special pur- 
pose of convincing and converting a 
wealthy and influential sceptic in his 
congregation. The gentleman at- 
tended his lectures and was con- 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 81 

verted^ and a few days after the 
minister ventured to. ask him which 
of the lectm^es it .was that impressed 
him decisively. ^^The lectures!" 
answered the gentleman, ^^my dear 
sir, I don't even remember the sub- 
jects of your lectures, and I cannot 
say that they had any decisive in- 
fluence upon my mind. I was con- 
verted by the testimony of a dear 
old colored woman who attended 
those services, and who, as she 
hobbled up the steps close to me, 
with her glad face, as bright as 
heaven, used to say, ''My blessed 
Jesus ! my blessed Jesus ! '' and turn- 
ing to me would ask, ' ' Do you love 
my blessed Jesus?" and that, sir, 
was my evidence of Christianity." 



82 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

Bless the Lord ! we can all shine 
like that, ^'burning/' as well as 
" shining" lights^ and setting hearts 
aglow with the contagion of our joy. 
The world is looking for happiness 
and if it find the secret in a genuine 
form, will try to get it. Charles 
Finney tells us how the good deacons 
used to ask him in prayer- meeting, 
when he attended it in his ungodly 
days, if he did not want them to 
pray for him. ''Ko," he said, ''I 
should be very sorry to have you 
prjy for me. For, in the first place, 
if I were conv^erted through your 
prayers I should be as miserable as 
you are ; and in the next place, I do 
not believe that your prayers would 
have any power to bring about my 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 83 

conversion^ and I suspect that you 
yourselves would be a good deal sur- 
prised if they had, for you have been 
praying in the same melancholy way 
ever since I came to this town, for a 
revival, and I can see by your tones 
and your faces that you have no idea 
that it is ever coming. When I am 
converted I want a religion that will 
make me happy, and a God who will 
do what I ask him/' 

Beloved, the Lord save us fiom 
rehgious melancholia, and send us 
out to work for Him with shining 
faces, victorious accents and hearts 
overflowing with contagious joy. 
Then, like Stephen, we will be able 
to look into the faces of our enemies 
and confound them by our very 



Si THE JOY OF THE LORD 

countenances, and force the world 
to ^'take knowledge of us that we 
have been with Jesus.'' 

Let the joy of the Lord be the strength of 

our ser^^.ce, 
As it speaks in our faces and accents of love, 
As it wins the sad world to the f uhiei^s of 

Jesus, 
And draws hungry hearts His salvation to 

prove. 

II. The secret of this joy. 

1. It springs from the assurance 
of salvation. It is the joy of salva- 
tion. Its happy song is, 

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, 
Oh, what a rapture of glory Divine ! 
Heir of salvation, purchased of God, 
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood. 
This is my story, this is my song. 
Praising my Saviour all the day long.'* 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 85 

If you would know it you must 
accept His promise with full assur- 
ance of faith^ and rest upon His 
word without a wavering or a doubt. 
2. It is tlie joy of the Holy Ghost. 
'^The fruit of the Spirit is love, 
joy." It is not indigenous to earthly 
soil ; it is a plant of heavenly birth. 
It belongs to the kingdom of God, 
which is ^' righteousness, and peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost." To 
know it we must receive the bap- 
tism of the Pentecostal Spirit in full 
surrender and simple faith. It is 
the characteristic of all who receive 
this baptism that they know the 
joy of the Lord, and until we do 
receive this eternal fountain in our 
heart, all our attempts at joy are 



86 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

but surface wells ; they are waters^ 
often defiled and their bottom often 
dry. This is the great Artesian 
stream, the ^^well of water" Jesus 
gives '^ springing up unto everlast- 
ing life." 

8. It is the joy of faith.- '^Now 
the God of hope fill you with all 
joy and peace in believing." There 
is indeed a deep delight when God 
has answered prayer, and the joy 
of fulfillment a ad possession over- 
flows with thankfulness, but there 
is a more thrilling joy when the 
heart first commits itself to His 
naked promise, and standing on His 
simple word in the face of natural 
improbability, or even seeming im- 
possibility, declares, '^though the fig- 



l?flE!l JOV 01? THE LORD 87 

tree shall not blossom nor fruit be in 
the vines, yet will I rejoice in the 
Lord and joy in the God of my sal- 
vation." If you are doubting God 
you need not wonder that your joy 
is intermittent. The witness of the 
Spirit always follows the act of trust. 
'^Thou wilt keep him in perfect 
peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, 
because he trusteth in Thee/' but it 
is just as true, '' Surely, if ye will not 
believe, ye shall not be established." 
4. The joy of the Lord is sustained 
by His word and nourished by His 
'^exceeding great and precious prom- 
ises." ''I rejoice in Thy Word," 
exclaims the Psalmist, ^^ as one that 
findeth great spoil." Oh, the rich 
delight of beholding in the Ught of 



88 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

the Holy Spirit, the heavenly land- 
scape of truth open before the spir- 
itual vision, like some land of promise 
shining in the glory of the sunlight, 
the whole Bible seeming like the 
vision Moses saw from Pisgah's top ! 
We have found great spoil and it is all 
our own. '^We have received the 
Spirit that we may know the things 
that are freely given us of God/' 
and we can truly say like the same 
Psalmist again, •'^^ Thy testimonies 
are the joy and rejoicing of my 
heart." How sweet the voice in 
which the Spirit speaks the promises 
to the sorrowing heart and makes this 
precious word a living voice from 
our Beloved ! 
Dear friends, do you know the 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 89 

joys that lies hidden in these neg- 
lected pages, the honey that you 
might drink from this garden of 
the Lord, these blossoms of truth 
and promise ? Oh, take your Bibles 
as the living love-letters of His 
heart to you and ask Him to speak 
it to you in joy and faith and 
spiritual illumination, as the sweet 
manna of your spirit's life and the 
honey out of the rock of Ages ! 

5. It is the joy of prayer. Its 
element is the closet, and its source 
the Mercy-seat. No prayerless life 
can be a happy one. ^^They that 
wait upon the Lord shall mount 
up on wings as eagles." ^' Ask and 
ye shall receive, that your joy majr 
be full." 



90 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

*'This is the place where Jesus sheds 
The oil of gladness on our heads ; 

The place than all besides more sweet, 
It is the blood-bought Mercy-seat." 

6. It is the joy of meekness and 
love. ^^For the meek shall increase 
their joy in the Lord," and the 
loving spirit ever finds that ^^it is 
more blessed to give than to receive." 
Selfishness is misery, love is life 
and joy. The gentle, lowly, chas- 
tened spirit shall find all the fiowers 
in bloom and the waters fiowing in 
the valleys of humility. The un- 
selfish heart shall never fail to prove 
the promise true, ^^If thou draw 
out thy soul to the hungry, and 
satisfy the afflicted soul, the Lord 
shall satisfy thy soul in drought, 



THE JOY OF THB LORD 91 

and thou shalt be like a watered 
garden and a spring of water whose 
waters fail not.'' 

Beloved, do you know the glad- 
ness which comes from yielding to 
the will of God, or bearing patient- 
ly the wrong, from being silent 
under the word of reproach, from 
returning good for evil, from the 
word that comforts the sorrowing 
heart, from the cup of cold water 
to another given, from the sacrifice 
of your own indulgence that the 
saving may be given to Him? Oh, 
then it is that all the bells of joy 
are heard softly ringing and the 
Master whispers to the hearts that 
tremble with its gladness, ^*ye did 
it unto me." 



92 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

7. It is the joy of service and 
especially of winning souls. All 
true work is a natural delight, but 
work for God in the true spirit 
and in the power of the Holy Ghost, 
is the very partnership of His joy, 
whose meat and drink it was to do 
the will of Him that sent Him and 
to finish his work. If you would 
have a life lifted above a thousand 
temptations and petty cares be busy 
for your Master, and let each mo- 
ment see 

''Some work of love begun 
Some deed of kindness done. 
Some wanderer sought and won, 
Something for Thee.'' 

We cannot convey the Living Water 
to another heart without being w^- 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 93 

tered ourselves on the way. There 
is no joy more exquisite than the 
joy of leading a soul to Christ. It is 
like the mother's strange, instinctive 
rapture over her new-born babe. 
The other day a precious friend 
passed through the gates a few mo- 
ments after her babe was born, but 
in the hour of her agony her very 
first word was, ''How is my babe?" 
It was the first thrill of that strange 
delight which is the very touch of 
the love which the Holy Ghost will 
give us for the souls He permits us 
to win for Christ. It is indeed a 
spiritual motherhood, and it has all 
the joy and all the pain of a mother's 
love. 
Beloved, do you know the ecstasy 



94 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

of feeling the new life of an immor- 
tal spirit sweeping through your 
very veins, as, kneeling by the side 
of one just born to die no more, you 
place it, as a new-born babe in the 
bosom of your Saviour? You may 
know this joy, and every Christian 
ought to know it a hundred-fold. 
It is the joy of angels, setting all 
the harps of heaven ringing, and 
surely it were strange if it were not 
the higher joy of ransomed saints. 

8. It is the joy of the faithful 
servant. There is a sense ev( n here, 
in which as often as we are true to 
God and faithful to the call of duty 
and opportunity. His Spirit gives us 
a present reward and a baptism of 
joy, and whispers to the faithful 



THE JOY OF THE LORD 95 

heart, ^^Well done, good and faith- 
ful servant! Enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 

9. It is the joy of hope. ''We 
rejoice in hope of the glory of God." 
It is the reflected light of the coming 
Sun-rise and the Millennial Day. 
Except the death and resurrection of 
Jesus and the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost, there is nothing that sheds 
within the heart a diviner gladness, 
and on the brow a holier light, than 
the blessed hope of the Lord's Com- 
ing. It is indeed "sl light in the 
dark place," the very Morning Star 
that presages the Rising Sun. Then 
let us in this blessed hope ''lift up 
our heads for our redemption draw- 
eth nigh." 



96 THE JOY OF THE LORD 

10. And finally^ it is the joy of 
Christ Himself within us. '^ These 
things have I spoken unto you^ that 
my joy might remain in you and that 
your joy might be full." This is the 
deepest secret of spiritual joy ; it is 
the indwelling Christ Himself rejoic- 
ing in the heart as He rejoiced on 
earth even in the darkest hour of His 
life, and as now, in heaven. He real- 
izes the fulfillment of His own Messi- 
anic words in the sixteenth psalm ; 
^'Therefore my heart is glad and my 
glory rejoiceth ; my flesh also shall 
rest in hope. For Thou w^ilt not 
leave my soul among the dead, nor 
suffer Thy Holy One to see corrup- 
tion. Thou wilt show me the path 
of life ; in Thy presence there is ful- 



TKE JOY OF THE LORD 1)7 

ness of joy, and at Thy right hand 
are pleasures for evermore." In the 
fulness of joy He is reigning now and 
its tides are swelling and rising to 
the same level in every heart in 
which He dwells. 

Walking along the ocean beach 
hundreds of feet from the shore you 
may dig a little hole in the dry sand, 
and it will fill with water. Under- 
neath the sand the waters flow and 
fill the pool to the level of their 
source. And so the life that is hid 
with Christ in God is in constant 
contact with the fountain of life, and 
though the world may not always 
see the overflow yet the heart's 
depths are ever filling and we only 
need to make room, and lo ! the 



9S THE JOY 0^ THE LORfi 

empty void^ whether great or small, 
is full to the measure of the fulness 
of God. This, beloved^, is why we 
beseech you to receive the indwelling 
Christ. He is the source of the Eiver 
of the Water of Life that flows from 
the Throne of God and the Lamb, 
and those whose hearts are His tem- 
ple can sing, no matter how the tem- 
pests rage and the fig-tree withers, 

'* God is the Treasure of my soul, 
The source of lasting joy ; 

A joy which time cannot impair, 
Nor death itself destroy." 



'*- 



FILLED WITH THE SPIBIT. 

*'Be filled with the Spirit/' Eph. v : 18. 
"Ye are complete (filled) in Him." Col. ii : 

10. 

HE emphatic word in both these 
_ verses is ' 'filled. " It is the Greek 
plaroo which means to fill full, so 
full that there will be no room left 
empty. This is the thought which, 
with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, 
we desire to impress in this message. 
It does not mean to have a measure 
of the Holy Spirit, and to know a 
good deal of Christ, but to be whoUy 
filled with, and possessed by, the 



100 FILLED AVITH THU SPIRIT 

Holy Ghost, and utterly lost in the 
life and fulness of Jesus. It is the 
completeness of the. filling which 
constitutes the very essence of the 
perfect blessing. A fountain half 
full will never become a spring. A 
river half full will never become a 
water power. A heart half filled 
will never know "the peace which 
passeth all understanding" and the 
power which flows from the inmost 
being, as ^'rivers of living water." 

I. THE NATURE OF THIS FILLING. 

1. It is all connected with a living 
Person. We are not filled with an 
influence ; we are not filled with a 
sensation ; we are not filled with a 
set of ideas and truths ; we are not 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 101 

flUed with a blessing, but we are 
filled with a person. This is very 
strange and striking. It is wholly 
different from all other teaching. 
Human systems of philosophy and 
religion all deal mainly with intel- 
lectual truths, moral conditions or 
external acts. Greek philosophy 
was a system of ideas ; Confucian- 
ism is a system of morals ; Judaism 
is a system of laws and ceremonies ; 
Christianity all centres in a living 
Person, and its very essence is the 
indwelling life of Christ Himself. 
He wa^ not only its Head and Found- 
er, but He is forever its living Heart 
and Substance, and the Holy Spirit is 
simply the agent and channel through 
whom He enters, possesses and oper- 



102 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

ates in the consecrated heart. This 
reduces Christian Hfe to great sim- 
phcity. We do not require to get 
filled in a great many compartments, 
and with a great many different ex- 
periences, ideas, or influences, but, 
in the centre of our being to receive 
Him in His personal life and fulness, 
and then He flows into every part 
and lives out His own life in all the 
diversified experiences and activities 
of our manifold life. 

In the one garden we plant the Hv- 
ing seed and water it from the same 
great fountain, and lo ! it springs up 
spontaneously with all the varied 
beauty and f ruitf ulness ' of the lily 
and the rose, the foliage plant and 
the fruit tree, the clinging jessamine 



PILLED AVITH THE SPIRIT 103 

and the spreading vine. We have 
simply to turn on the fertihzing 
spring and nature's spontaneous Hf e 
bursts forth in all its beautiful vari- 
ety. 

This, by a simple figure, is Christ's 
theory of a deeper life. Our being is 
the soil, He is the seed, His Holy 
Spirit is the Founiain of living Wa- 
ters, and " the fruit of the Spirit is 
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance." 

Out in the great West lie millions 
of acres of barren land. They are a 
great possibility, but practically fruit- 
less and waste. Beneath the soil of 
these Saharas lie undeveloped riches, 
all that is needed being one single 



104: FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

element that would develop them 
into fruitfulness. That element is 
water. Let the mountain stream be 
turned into yonder valley, let the 
irrigating channels spread their net- 
work over all their vast fields, and lo ! 
you behold a paradise, as lovely as 
the streets of Salt Lake City or some 
of the sweet villages and towns of 
California, wath a luxuriance of 
beauty such as none of our eastern 
lands can show. The soil was empty 
and barren until it became filled with 
the seed and the springs, and then 
the transformation sprang up with 
spontaneous luxuriance. So the hu- 
man heart is not self- constituted or 
self sufficient ; it is a bare and bar- 
ren possibility. It may struggle its 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 105 

best to develop itself, but it will only 
develop, as those Western deserts 
the sage brush and stunted palm 
which cover them to-day. But give 
it two things. Drop into that soil 
the living Christ, and flood it with 
the water of the Spirit's fulness, and 
lo ! it reaches the realization of its 
true idea, and the promise of His own 
simple parable is perfectly fulfilled, 
" He that abideth in Me and I in him, 
the same bringeth forth much fruit ; 
for apart from Me ye can do noth- 
ing." 

Shall we then realizt;, beloved, that 
God has made each of us, not a self- 
contained world of power and perfec- 
tion, but simply a capacity to receive 
Him, a shell to hold His fulness, a 



106 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

soil to receive His Living Seed and 
fertilizing streams^ and to produce, in 
union with Him, the fruits of grace ? 
And shall we realize, on the other 
hand, that God has so constituted 
Christ and the Holy Spirit, who is 
just the Spirit of Christ, as perfectly 
to meet and satisfy the capacities and 
possibilities of our being ; so that, 
while we are nothing without Him, 
His life and grace equally require us 
for their full development. Into His 
living Son God has poured all His ful- 
ness, so that '^in Him dwelleth all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily." 
The Holy Spirit has now become the 
great Eeservoir and system of dis- 
tributing pipes and channels through 
which His fulness flows into us^ and 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT lOT 

there is nothing which God requires 
of a man, or which man can ever 
need in the varied exigencies of life 
but Christ possesses for us, and we 
may have an exact adjustment to our 
every need, by simply receiving Him. 
This is the meaning of that beautiful 
expression, ^^Of His fulness have all 
we received, even grace for grace. 
For the law was given by Moses, but 
grace and reality came by Jesus 
Christ." All other systems gave us 
merely the ideas of things or the 
commandments or laws which re- 
quire them of us. But Christ brings 
the power to reahze them and is 
Himself the reality and substance in 
our hearts and lives. He is the Great 
Typical Man. But He is more than 



108 FILLED AVITH THE SPIRIT 

a pattern or a type^ exhibiting what 
we ought to be, and demanding our 
imitation. He is also the Living 
Head and Progenitor of the very hfe 
which He Himself exhibits, begetting 
it in each of us by a living imparta- 
tion of His very being, and reproduc- 
ing Himself in us by the very power 
of His own life, and then feeding and 
nourishing this life by the Holy Spirit 
out of His own being. 

Christ's Person, therefore, is far 
more than a pattern. It is a power, 
a seed, a spring of Living Water, 
nay, the very substance and support 
of the life He requires of us. 

2. This Person is the true fulness 
of every part of our life. The idea 
of filling implies universality and 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT lOU 

completeness in the range within 
which He fills us. We are not filled 
unless W3 are filled in every part. 
This is just what Christ proposes to 
do in our full salvation. 

He fills all the requirements of our 
salvation, all the conditions in- 
volved in connection with our re- 
demption, reconciliation, justifica- 
tion. He just takes the indictment 
against us and fills it in with His own 
precious atonement, and in His ov/n 
blood writes, ^^ Settled forever. '^ He 
takes the broken law and the sad and 
humiliating record of our failures, 
omissions and transgressions, and 
fills it up with its own perfect right- 
eousness and writes over all our re- 
cord, ^^ Christ is the end of the law 



110 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

for righteousness to every one that 
beheveth;" '' Accepted in the Be- 
loved;" ^^ He was made sin for us 
who knew no sin that we might be 
made the righteousness of God in 
Him." 

And so ^^ we are complete in Him." 
'^By one offering He hatli perfected 
forever them that are sanctified/' and 
we are as fully saved as if we had 
never sinned. 

Now beloved, the great thing is to 
realize right here that this is com- 
plete, and, at the very threshold, to 
begin to enter into the fulness of 
Christ by recognizing ourselves as 
fully justified and forever saved from 
all past sin and transgression through 
the complete redemption of Jesus 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 111 

Christ. The lack of fulness in our 
subsequent experience is largely due 
to doubts and limitations which we 
allow to enter here. Christ's work 
for our redemption was finished and 
when we accept it, it is a complete 
and eternal salvation. 

Again, Christ fills the deeper need 
uf sanctification. He has provided 
for this in His atonement and in the 
resources of His grace. It is all 
wrapped up in Him and must be re- 
ceived as a free and perfect gift 
through Him alone. ^^For of Him 
are ye in Christ Jesus who of God is 
made unto us sanctification." Is 
sanctification the deaths of the sinful 
self ? Well, this has been crucified 
with Him already upon the Cross, 



112 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

and we have but to hand it over to 
Him in unreserved committal and 
He will slay it and bury it forever in 
His grave. Is sanctification a new 
life of purity^ righteousness, peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost? Still 
more emphatically is it true that 
Christ Himself must be our life, our 
peace, our purity, and our full and 
overflowing joy. 

Again, He is the fulness of our 
heart life. There is no place so sacred 
to us as our affections, no place so 
claimed by the great adversary of 
our souls, and so impossible to regu- 
late by our own power and will. But 
Christ will give us His heart as well 
as His Spirit, and will love in us with 
the love which loves ^^the Lord our 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 113 

God with all our heart and soul and 
strength and mind/' and which loves 
'^one another even as He has loved 
us." Oh, how blessed that we have 
One who will really fill all the deli- 
cate and infinitely difficult and varied 
requirements of these sensibilities 
and affections, which carry with them 
such a world of possibility for our 
own or others' weal or woe. 

Again, Christ will fill all the needs 
of our intellectual life. Our mental 
capacities will never know their full 
wealth of power and spiritual effec- 
tiveness until they become simply the 
vessels of His quickening life, and 
these brains of ours are laid at His 
feet simply as the censers which are 
to hold His holy fire. He will think 



114 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

in US, remember in us, judge in us, 
impart definiteness and clearness to 
our conceptions of truth, give us the 
tongue of fire, the illustration that 
both illuminates and melts, the ac- 
cent and tone of persuasiveness and 
sympathy, the power of quick ex- 
pression and utterance, and all the 
equipment necessary to make us 
workmen ^'that need not to be 
ashamed, rightly dividing the word 
of truth." Not of course without 
diligent and faithful attention to His 
wise and holy teaching, as He leads 
us in His work to see at once our own 
shortcomings and His full purpose 
for us. We must be taught of God, 
and teaching is sometimes very grad- 
ual, and even slow; but ^^He will 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 115 

guide US into all truth," and '^perfect 
that which concerneth " our educa- 
tion and preparation for His work 
and will ; and the mind that the Holy 
Spirit quickens and uses shall accom- 
plish results for God which all the 
brilliancy of human genius and the 
scholarship of human learning can 
never approach. 

Again, He will fill the needs of our 
body^ for His body has been consti- 
tuted, by the resurrection from the 
dead, a perpetual source of physical 
energy^ sufiicient for every member 
of His body the church, and adapted 
to every physical function and every 
test that comes in the pressure of 
human life, and the experience of a 
world where every step is beset with 



116 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

the elements of disease, suffering and 
physical danger. Christ is the true 
life of a redeemed body, and His Holy 
Spirit is able so to quicken these mor- 
tal bodies, as He dwells within us, 
that they shall receive a supernatural 
vigor directly derived from our ex- 
alted Head. 

Again, Christ will fill all the situa- 
tions of providence and all the needs 
that arise in our secular callings and 
the circumstances of our daily life. 
There is not one of them that may 
not be recognized as coming from 
Him, and meant to prove His all- 
sufficiency in some new direction. 
Oh, had we the faith to see God in 
everything as it meets us day by day, 
every chapter of life's history would 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT ll7 

be a new story of the romance of 
heavenly love in its magical power to 
transform darkness into light, diffi- 
culty into triumph, sorrow into joy, 
and the earthly into the heavenly ; 
and Christ would be enabled to mani- 
fest Himself in His grace and power 
to innumerable witnesses, who never 
hear of Him from a pulpit, or read 
the story of His grace in anything 
else but human lives, in whom they 
could thus behold Him. 

Again Christ will fill our capacities 
for happiness. He is the fulness of 
our peace and joy. He is the true 
portion of the souls that He has 
made ; and, wholly filled with Him, 
there is no room for either care or 
fear. 



118 FILLED WITH TlfE SPIRIT 

Finally, Christ will fill that funda- 
mental need on which every other 
experience of His fulness depends, 
namely, the faith that receives Him. 
This too, is but the life of Christ 
within us, and our highest part in 
the life of faith is to so abandon even 
our highest and hardest efforts to 
trust God and so boldly venture that 
we can receive the very faith of God 
and claim the ^^all things that are 
possible to him that believeth." 

3. To be filled with Christ is not 
only to be filled with the Divine life 
in' every part, but it is to be filled 
every moment. It is to take Him in- 
to the successive instants of our con- 
scious existence and to abide in His 
fulness. For this is not a reservoir 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 119 

but a spring. It is a life which is 
continual^ active and ever passing on 
with an outflow as necessary as its 
inflow, and if we do not perpetually 
draw the fresh supply from" the living 
fountain, we shall either grow^ stag- 
nant or empty. It is, therefore, not 
so much a perpetual fulness as a per- 
petual filling. 

It is true there are periodical experi- 
ences of spiritual elevation which are 
part of God's plan for our life in 
Christ, and are designed no doubt to 
lift us to a higher plane of abiding 
union with Him. There are the 
Pentecosts and second Pentecosts, 
the great freshets and flood-tides, aU 
of which have their necessary place 
in the spiritual economy. But there 



120 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

is the continual receiving, breath by 
breath and moment by moment, be- 
tween these long intervals and more 
marked experiences, which is even 
more needful to spiritual steadfast- 
ness and healthfulness. God would 
have us alive to all His approaches, 
and open to all the ^'precious things of 
heaven, the dew, and the deep that 
coucheth beneath, the precious fruits 
brought forth by the sun, the precious 
things put forth by the moon, the 
precious things of the earth and the 
fulness thereof. " Such lives will find 
that there is no moment of exist- 
ence, and no part of our being 
which may not be some minister of 
God and draw some blessing from 
Him. 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 121 
II. THE EFFECTS OF THE DIVINE FILLING. 

1. It is the secret of holiness. There 
is a measure of the Holy Spirit's life 
in every regenerate soul^ but it is 
when every part of our beiiig is filled 
with His love and possessed for His 
glory that we are wholly sanctified, 
and it is this divine fulness which ex- 
cludes and keeps out the power of sin 
and self, even as it was the descend- 
ing cloud upon the tabernacle which 
left no room for Moses within. 

Would you have continual purity 
of heart and thought and feeling, and 
entire conformity to the will of 
God? ^^Be filled with the Spirit;" 
^^Of His fulness have we received, 
even grace for grace." Let the 
heavenly water flow into every' 



122 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

channel of irrigation and by every 
garden bed and plant, until all the 
graces of our Christian life shall be 
replenished by His grace, and bloom 
like the garden of the Lord. Only 
abide in Him and have His abiding, 
and you shall bring forth all the 
fruit of the Spirit. 

2. It is the secret of happiness. A 
heart half full is only full enough to 
make it conscious of its lack. It is 
when the cattle are filled that they 
lie down in the green pastures. 
'^ These things have I spoken unto 
you that my joy might remain in 
you and that your joy might be 
full." 

3. It is the secret of power. The 
electric current can so fill a little 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 123 

wire that it will become a force to 
turn the great wheels of the factory, 
and the overflowing sluice of the 
village stream has power enough to 
run a score of factories all along the 
river banks, but it is simply because 
it is overflowing. Only full hearts 
accomplish effectual work for God. 
Only the overflow of our blessing 
blesses others. 

III. THE CONDITIONS OF BEING FILLED. 

1. He has promised to fill the hun- 
gry. ^^ Blessed are they which do 
hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness for they shall be filled." Many 
who read these lines are no doubt 
longing for this experience and 
thinking with discouragement of 



124 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

how far short they come. Dear 
friend, this deep desire is the very 
beginning of the blessing you seek, 
and already the Holy Spirit is at 
work preparing your heart for the 
answer to your cry. No soul finds 
the fulness of Jesus so speedily as 
the one that is most deeply conscious 
of its failure and its needs. Thank 
God for that intense desire that will 
not let you rest short of His blessing. " 
An eastern caravan was overtaken 
once in the desert with the failure 
of the supply of water. The accus- 
tomed fountains were all dried, the 
oasis was a desert, and they halted 
an hour before sunset to find, after 
a day of scorching heat, that they 
were perishing for want of water. 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 125 

Vainly they explored the usual wells^ 
for they were all dry. Dismay was 
upon all faces and despair in all 
hearts, when one of the ancient men 
approached the sheik and counselled 
him to unloose two beautiful harts 
that he was conveying home as a 
present to his bride, and let them 
scour the desert in search of water. 
Their tongues were protruding with 
thirst, and their bosoms heaving 
with distress. But as they were led 
out to the borders of the camp and 
then set free on the boundless plain, 
they lifted up their heads on high, 
and sniffed the air with distended 
nostrils, and then, with unerring 
instinct, with course as straight as an 
arrow, and speed as swift as the 



126 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

wind, they darted off across the 
desert. Swift horsemen followed 
close behind, and an hour or two 
later hastened back with the glad 
tidings that water had been found, 
and the camp moved with shouts 
of rejoicing to the happily discovered 
fountains. 

So still there is a hart that can 
ever find the springs of living water. 
It is the heart that hungers and 
thirsts for God. Thank God, be- 
loved, if you have this deep spiritual 
instinct in your soul ! Follow it as 
it leads you to the Throne of ^race, 
to wait, and cry, and receive, until 
you can say, ^^ Satisfied with favor 
and full with the blessing of the 
Lord." 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 127 

2. The empty are always filled. 
^'He hath filled the hungry with 
good things, but the rich He hath 
sent empty away," ^^ Blessed are 
the poor in spirit for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven." ^'Having 
nothing and yet possessing all 
things." This is the paradox of 
grace. We never can be filled until 
we have room for God. Every 
great blessing begins with a great 
sacrifice, a great severance, a great 
dispossessing. ^^He brought them 
out that He might bring them in.^^ 
Abraham must let Lot have his 
choice before he can have his full 
inheritance. Isaac must be offered 
on Mount Moriah before God can 
jxiake it the seat of Jiis future tern- 



128 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

pie. Moses must let go the honors 
and prospects of his Egyptian 
princedom before he can receive his 
great commission^ the lasting honor 
of his life work. The heart must 
be emptied of self and the world 
before it can be filled with Jesus 
and the Holy Ghost. Probably each 
of us is as full as we can hold be- 
cause the places God does not fill are 
crammed with something else and 
God finds no room. Are we willing 
to be emptied? ^^Make the valley 
full of ditches/' is still the prophet's 
command^ ^^and the valley shall be 
filled with water." Are we in the 
valley of humiliation, and have we 
opened, in the valley the still deeper 
ditches of need and conscious insuf- 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 129 

ficiency? In proportion as we can 
say^ ^^lam not sufficient," we shall 
be able to add, ^^My sufficiency is of 
God." Have we not only emptied 
out the old pirate self-will and his 
crew of worldliness and sin, but 
also all the cargo of our own strength, 
faith and religious experience, and 
made room for Christ to be our All 
and in all always ? Do we habitually 
cease from ourselves in everything 
and thus make it necessary for God 
to assume the responsibility and 
supply the sufficiency, and in this 
spirit of self-renunciation and abso- 
lute dependence are we growing 
poorer and richer every day? 

3. The open 'heart shall be ffiled. 
^^Open thy mouth wide and I will 



130 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT^ 

fill it." We know what it is for 
the flower-cup to close its petals and 
also to open to the sunlight, the dew 
and the refreshing shower. The 
heart has its susceptibilities and re- 
ceptive sensibilities, but often it is 
so tightened up with unbelief, doubt, 
fear, and self-consciousnecs that it 
cannot take in the love which God 
is waiting to pour out. Do we not 
know what it is to meet people, with 
a heart full of love, and find them 
all tightened up and heart-bound? 
We become conscious at once of the 
repulsion and feel all the fountains 
of our love obstructed and rolled 
back again upon our own aching 
hearts. They cannot receive us. It 
is Hke the mother who found her 



Mlled With theI spirit ISl 

long-lost child after years of separ- 
ation, but the child could not recog- 
nize the mother, and as she tried to 
awaken its response and to pour out 
the full tides of her bursting heart 
and found no recognition, but only 
the dull stare of strangeness and 
suspicion, and all her carresses and 
tender over-flowings of affection re- 
jected and met with cold indifference 
and even recoil, her heart broke in 
grief and disappointment, and she 
wept and sobbed in agony. 

The heart of God is pouring out 
His love to many a soul who cannot, 
will not, take it in. It does not 
know its Father. His face is strange. 
There seems no avenue to the dull 
earthly heart and even the love of 



132 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

God has cause to exclaim, ^^How 
often would I have gathered you as 
a hen gathereth her brood under her 
wings and ye would not ! " I have 
seen a man dying for months simply 
because he could not swallow more 
than a single grain of food or spray 
of moisture. Many a Christian's 
spiritual larynx is just as shrunken, 
and millions are starving to death in 
the midst of plenty, because their 
hearts are not open to receive God. 
There must be confidence, trust, the 
love that draws near and takes, the 
faith that accepts and receives, and 
the quietness of spirit that stays 
long enough open to be wholly filled. 
4. Again, we are filled by waiting 
upon the Lord in prayer, and especi- 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 133 

ally in continued and persevering 
prayer. It was after they had 
waited upon the Lord that they were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost. 
Prayer is not only an asking but 
also a receiving. Many of us do not 
wait long enough before the Lord to 
get filled. You can take your break- 
fast in half an hour, but you cannot 
be filled with the Holy Spirit as 
quickly. There should be seasons of 
special waiting upon the Lord for 
this very purpose, and then there 
should be a ceaseless abiding in the 
Lord for the quiet replenishing, 
moment by moment. The one may 
be compared to the great rain storms 
that flood the river, and the other to 
the ceaseless moisture of the air and 



134 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

the morning and evening dews. No 
child of God who^ in a proper spirit, 
and with an entire self-surrender 
and trust, waits upon God for the 
full baptism of His Holy Ghost, will 
ever be disappointed, but we shall 
surely go forth from such seasons 
refreshed and over-flowing with the 
love and life of God, and will find 
that special influences of power and 
blessing will follow such seasons, 
both in our own lives and the lives 
of others. 

5. Service for God and for others 
is perhaps the most effectual con- 
dition of receiv^ing continually the 
fulness of the Spirit. As w^e pour 
out the blessing God will pour it in. 
We have a pump in one of our in- 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 135 

stitutions which is worked by steam. 
We have a way of always knowing 
when the reservoir on the roof is 
full. There is a little tell-tale down- 
stairs which begins to run and a 
little bell to ring. Then we know 
that the over-flow has begun, and the 
signal has sounded. As long as the 
pump is silent we know that it is 
not full, but that little signal and the 
accompanying steam running from 
the open tap are as good as a tele- 
gram from the distant roof. So we 
can always tell in the Church of 
God when it is not full. There are 
some Christians whose bell only 
rings once in a very long time and 
whose over-flow is so feeble and in- 
frequent that it would scarcely fur- 



136 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

nish one good drink to a poor thirsty 
wayfarer. 

Beloved^ let us keep pouring out 
more of God's blessing and see if He 
will not more abundantly poar in 
the floods of His grace. Let us be 
very practical about this. Every 
blessing that we have received from 
God is a sacred trust and it will be 
continued only as we use it for Him. 
Our salvation is not our own ; it be- 
longs to every perishing soul on the 
face of the globe who has not yet 
had the opportunity of accepting 
Jesus. Our sanctification and our 
great secret of the fulness of Jesus 
is a sacred trust for every Christian 
who has not yet received the fulness 
of God, and if we do not let this 



FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 137 

light shiiiGj it will surely become ob- 
scure and we will not be able to tell 
out the story of our blessing. Our 
healing belongs to some sufferer. Our 
every experience is adjusted to some 
heart, and will enable us to meet 
some brother's need if we are but 
faithful to the opportunities of God's 
providence. Oh, how clear a truth 
becomes to us when we are trying to 
tell it to others ! Oh, how real the 
baptism of the Holy Ghost when we 
are kneeling by another's side to 
claim it for them ! Oh, how the 
streams of Christ's healing flow 
through our very flesh as we are 
leading some poor sufferer into the 
truth ! Oh, how the joy of our 
salvation swells as we see it spring 



138 FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT 

in the heart that we have just led 
to the fountain ! Oh^ the fulness 
that God is longing to share with 
every vessel that has room to re- 
ceive it and readiness to give? As 
we have therefore received His ful- 
ness let us pass it on, drinking as 
the living waters flow through our 
hands, until we shall realize in 
some measure, the largeness and 
blessedness of the great promise of 
the Lord, ''If any man thrist, let 
him come unto Me and drink. He 
that believeth on Me (as the Scrip- 
ture saith), out of his inmost being 
shall flow rivers of living water.'' 



THE LAEGER LIFE. 



"Be ye also enlarged.'' 2 Cor. vi : 11. 

T'HE law of growth is a f undamen- 
^ tal principle of all nature and re- 
demption. Whatever ceases to grow 
begins to die ; stagnancy brings cor- 
ruption ; the corpse belongs to the 
worm ; a self-contained pool becomes 
a malarious swamp. Vegetation 
springs from a seed, the seed grows 
into a tree, and the tree into a forest. 
Human life commences in infancy 
and develops to maturity. The word 
of God has all unfolded from a single 
promise. The great plan of redemption 



140 TIIS LARGER LIFE 

has been a ceaseless progression, and 
will be through the ages upon ages 
that are yet to come. 

The experience of the soul is a 
growth. True, it must have a starting 
point. "We cannot grow into Christian- 
ity ; we must be born from above and 
then grow. And so sanctification is 
progressive, and yet it has a definite 
beginning. Christ is completely 
formed within us, but He is the 
infant Christ, and grows up to the 
maturity of the perfect man in us 
just as He did in His earthly life. 

It is here that the enlargement of 
our text meets us. It is only the 
truly consecrated Christian that 
grows. The other treads the ceaseless 
circle of the wilderness. But he has 



THE LARGER LIFE 141 

crossed the Jordan and begun the 
conquest of the land and the pro- 
gressive experience of which it was 
the beautiful pattern and symbol. 
No book in the Bible has more pro- 
gress in it than the book of Joshua ^ 
and yet from the very beginning it 
is the life of one who has wholly 
died to self and sin and has taken 
Christ for full salvation and is walk- 
ing in the heavenly places in Him. 

And even the book of Joshua only 
begins its highest advance when it 
is almost ended. It is after the 
whole land is subdued^ that the call 
comes^ ^'How long are ye slack to 
go up and possess all the land? 
There remaineth yet very much land 
to be possessed.'' And then it is 



142 THE LARGER LIFE 

that old Caleb, who has the 
weight of eighty four years on his 
honored head, steps forth and claims 
the privilege of entering upon the 
boldest and hardest campaign of his 
life, the conquest of Hebron and the 
Anakim. It is to us then, who know 
the Lord Jesus in His fulness, that 
He is saying, ''Be ye also enlarged." 

I. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ENLARGED. 

1. We need a larger vision. All 
great movements begin in great 
ideas. There is no i3rogress without 
a new thought as its embryo. China 
has remained the same for three 
thousand years because China has 
not accepted a new idea. Her teach- 
er is a man who lived long before 



THE LARGITR LIFE 143 

Christ, and for nearly thirty cen- 
turies she has followed the ideas of 
Confucius and is just the same to-day 
as she was thirty centuries ago. Let 
China receive the American idea or 
the Christian idea and she will be 
revolutionized at once. 

So the first step in our advance 
must be a new conception of the 
truth as it is in Jesus and a larger 
view of His word and will for us. 
We do not need a new Bible, but we 
need new eyes to read our Bible and 
brighter light to shine upon its deep 
and pregnant pages. We need to 
see, not simply a system of exegesis 
or a system of Biblical exposition and 
criticism ; a thorough knowledge of 
the letter and its wondrous frame- 



144 TP]E LARGER LIFE 

work of history^ geography, antiqui- 
ties and ancient languages ; but a 
vivid, large and spiritual conception 
of what it means for us and what 
God's thought in it for each of us is. 
We want to take it as the message 
of heaven to the nineteenth century 
and the last decade, nay, the living 
voice of the Son of God to us this 
very hour, and to see in it the very 
idea which He Himself has for our 
life and work ; to take in the prom- 
ises as He understands them, the 
commandments as He intends them 
to be obeyed, and the hopes of the 
future as He unfolds them upon the 
nearer horizon of their approaching 
fulfillment. How little have we 
grasped the length and breadth and 



THE LARGER LIFE 145 

depth and height of this heavenly 
message ! How httle have we real- 
ized its authority and its personal 
directness to us ! '' Open thou my 
eyes^ Lord, that I may behold won- 
drous things out of Thy law!" ^'I 
will run in the way of Thy com- 
mandments when Thou shalt enlarge 
my heart." That ye may be filled 
with ^Hhe spirit of wisdom and reve- 
lation in the knowledge of Him ; the 
eyes of your heart being enlight- 
ened ; that ye may know what is 
the hope of His calling, and w^hat 
the riches of the glory of His inher- 
itance in the saints." May the 
Lord grant it to each of us in the 
largest possible measure in accord- 
ance with His will ! 



146 THE LAROER LIFE 

2. We need a larger faith. What 
is the use of Hght if we do not use 
it ? We need a faith that will per- 
sonally appropriate all that we un- 
derstand^ and a faith so large that 
it w^ill reach the fulness of God's 
great promises ; so large that it will 
rise to the level of each emergency 
as it comes into our life. Do we 
not often feel that a promise has 
been brought to us with a light and 
power that we have been unable to 
claim and a need has arisen that w^e are 
persuaded God is able to meet, but 
for which we are conscious our faith 
is not grasping the victory^ at least 
according to the full measure of the 
exigency ? This ought not so to be. 
If all things are possible to him that 



THE LARGER LIFE 147 

believeth we ought to have all things 
in His will for every moment of 
life's need. The Divine pattern of 
faith is the faith of God. Oh, let us 
be enlarged to this high measure ! 

3. We need a larger love. We 
need a love that will meet God's 
claim of perfect love, that we shall 
^'love the Lord our God with all our 
soul and with all our mind and with 
all our strength." We need a love 
that will love one another ^ ^ even as 
He has loved us." We need a love 
that will ^^love our enemies and 
pray for them that despitefully use 
us and persecute us." We need a 
love that will love the lost as He 
loves them, overcoming our repug- 
nance to every personal condition, 



148 THE LARGER LIFE 

and delighting to suffer or sacrifice 
for their salvation with the joy that 
counts it no sacrifice. We need a 
love that will take our brother's 
need and pain as if it were our own, 
and ^^ remember those in bonds as 
bound with them, and them that 
suffer adversity as being also in the 
body." We need a love that ^'suf- 
fers long and is kind ; that envieth 
not : that vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up, seeketh not her own, is 
not provoked, thinketh no evil, re- 
joiceth not in inquity but rejoiceth 
in the truth ; beareth all things, be- 
lieveth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things ; that never 
faileth." 
4. We need a larger joy. We need 



THE LARGER LIFE 149 

a joy that will not only rejoice in the 
gifts of God^ but will rejoice in God 
Himself and find in Him our portion 
and our boundless and everlasting 
delight. We need a joy that will 
not only rejoice in the sunshine but 
in the hour of darkness and ap- 
parent desertion, when men mis 
understand us, when circumstances 
are against us and when even God 
seems to have forgotten us. We 
need a joy that will not only rejoice 
in all things, but rejoice evermore. 
We need a joy that even when we 
do not feel the joy, will " count it all 
joy," and rejoice by faith. We need 
a joy so large, so deep, so divine that 
it will not feel its sacrifices,* will not 
talk about its trials, but will ^'en- 



160 THE LARGER LIFE 

dure the cross despising the shame/' 
^^for the joy set before us.'' 

5. We need a larger experience. 
We do not mean by this any mere 
state of emotional feeling, but a 
larger range of Christian living, a 
bringing of Christ more into every- 
thing ; an experience that will prove 
Him in all situations, amid secular 
business,exasperatingpircumstances, 
baffling perplexities, extreme vicissi- 
tudes ; and, going all round the 
circle of human life, will be 'able to 
say, '^I have learned the secret, in 
every state in which I am therewith 
to be content. I know how to be 
abased and how to abound ; I know 
how to be full and to be hungry, to 
abound and to suffer need. I can 



THE LARGER LIFE 151 

do all things through Christ who 
strengtheneth me." That is a large 
experience. That is a degree in the 
school of Christ that will out- weigh 
all the D. D.'s of all the colleges. 

6. We need a larger work. We 
do not mean by this that we need a 
larger sphere. That may not be. 
That certainly is not the case if we 
are not filling our present ; but we 
need a better quality of work. We 
need to finish our unfinished work. 
We need to do the things that we 
have thought of doing, intended to 
do, talked about doing, and are 
abundantly able to do. We need to 
do the work that can be done in the 
intervals and interstices of life, the 
work that can be done on the way 



152 THE LARGER LIFE 

and on the wing, betiveen times as 
well as 171 times of special service 
and appointment ; the word that can 
be spoken as we casually meet 
people ; the work that can be done 
by the wayside and on the cross- 
roads of life, where souls meet that 
never meet again. Sometimes the 
ministry that can be performed at 
such a moment becomes the pivot 
for hundreds of souls and eternal 
ages to turn upon. We need a work 
that is larger in its upward direc- 
tion, more wholly for Grod, more 
singly devoted to His glory, and 
more satisfied with His approval 
whether men are pleased or not. 
And we need a larger conception and 
realization of the work that He ex- 



THE LARGER LIFE 153 

pects of US in the special line in 
which He has been developing our 
Christian life. Most of those who 
read these lines or hear these words 
have been called to know Christ in a 
measure unknown to the great mass 
of the people of God, and we have not 
yet realized what God expects of us 
in spreading these special truths and 
extending this blessed movement, of 
which Christ is the centre and sub- 
stance, over all the land and over all 
the world. God is calling us at this 
time to a larger faith for this special 
work — the testimony of Jesus in all 
His fulness to all the world. 

7. We need a larger hope. We 
need to realize more vividly, more 
personally, more definitely, what 



154 THE LARGER LIFE 

the coming of the Lord means, and 
means to us, until the future shall 
become alive with the actual expecta- 
tion and ever immanent prospect of 
His Kingdom and His reward. Oh 
how little this great hope has been 
to the hearts and lives of most of us 
until within a few years ! How ut- 
terly blind the majority of Christians 
are to it as an actual experience ! 
How much inspiration is it fitted to 
afford to the heart that truly realizes 
it ! May the Lord enlarge our hopes and 
intensify them until this becomes, 
next to the love of Jesus, the most 
inspiring, stimulating, quickening 
motive of our Christian life and work! 
8. We need a larger baptism of 
the Holy Spirit, for this is the true 



THE LARGER LIFE 155 

summing up of all that we have 
said. It is one thing, not many 
things, that we need; and, filled 
with the Spirit in still larger meas- 
ure, the fruit of the Spirit shall ex- 
pand and increase in proportion. 
We need more room for His indwell- 
ing, more scope for His expanding, 
more channels for His outflow. We 
are not straitened in Him, we are 
straitened in ourselves. ' ' He giveth 
not the Spirit by measure," but we 
receive Him in very confined and 
small capacities. He wants more 
room ; He wants our entire being, 
and He wants so to fill it that we 
shall be expanded into larger possi- 
bilities for His inworking and His 
outflowing. 



156 THE LARGER LIFE 

Beloved^ ^^be ye enlarged.'^ And 
not only in all these senses and di- 
rections, which, no doubt, have 
searched us and made us realize the 
limitations of our present lives, but 
we want to be enlarged in the qual- 
ity of our hfe ; we want not only 
more breadth and length, but we 
want depth and height, a more spir- 
itual, a more mellow, a more mature 
frution, and a more established, set- 
tled and immovable standing in and 
for Him. 

II. CONSIDERATIONS AND DIRECTIONS 
WITH A VIEW TO OUR EN- 
LARGEMENT. 

1. In order to our being enlarged 
we must be delivered from and lifted 



THE LARGER LIFE 157 

above our old conceptions, ideas and 
experiences. In a word, we must 
be delivered from our past. Old 
things must pass away before all 
things can be made new. We must 
die to our religious self as well as to 
our sinful self. It was when he was 
far on in the spiritual life that Paul 
uttered the sublime aspiration, 
^'Forgetting those things that are 
behind, and reaching forth unto 
those things which are before^ I 
press towards the mark for the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." In the strata of our globe 
we find traces of the wreck of 
former conditions of organic life. 
There was a creation and then there 
was a disintegration, and on its ruins 



158 THE LARGER LIFE 

a new and higher development. So 
in the spiritual world, we come to 
the place where we are conscious 
that the old experience fails to satis- 
fy. The old '^Eephidims" are 
dry and we must open some new 
rock of Horeb and receive supplies 
from a higher source than before. 
When you find your old nest ceasing 
to rest you, be willing to leave it, 
and like the eaglets, be hurled into 
space, that you may be taught to fly. 
Let the old things pass away. They 
are but the basis of something better. 
Let the old turn-pike be broken up. 
The King's Highway is to be built 
above it, and God's great elevated 
railway carry us where formerly we 
trod with weary feet, 



THE LARGER LIFE 159 

There is nothing that keeps us 
from advancement more than ruts 
and drifts, wheel-tracks into which 
our chariots roll and then move on 
in the narrow hne with unchanging 
monotony, currents in life's stream 
on which we are borne in the old 
direction until the law of habit 
almost makes advance impossible. 
The true remedy for all this is to 
commence each day anew and to 
commence at nothing; taking Christ 
afresh to be the Alpha and Omega 
for a deeper, higher, diviner experi- 
ence, waiting even for His conception 
of thought, desire, prayer, and afraid 
Jest our highest thought should be 
below His great plan of wisdom and 
love, 



160 THE LARGER LIFE 

Are there not some of us^ beloved, 
who have been trying a good while 
to get back an old experience ? If 
we succeeded we should only be 
Yv^here we were, and if we are only 
going to get where we were, we have 
abandoned the law of progress and 
begun the downward retrogression. 
God has Himself withered by His 
own consuming breath the flower 
and fragrance of your former joys, 
that He may lead you into some- 
thiug better. Let your old experi- 
ence go, and take the living, ever- 
lasting Christ instead. Be wilhngto 
be enlarged according to His thought, 
and exceeding abundantly above 
all that you have yet been able to 
ask or think. 



THE LARGER LIFE 161 

2. If we would be enlarged accord- 
ing to the thought of God, we must 
be delivered from all human stand- 
ards, opinions and patterns, and ac- 
cept nothing less than God's own 
divine ideal. Multitudes are kept 
from spiritual progress by cast-iron 
systems of doctrine which have 
settled forever the fact that holiness 
is impossible in the present life, and 
that ' 'no mere man, since the fall, is able 
to keep the commandments of God, 
but doth daily break them in word, 
thought and deed.''* And then a row 
of human characters is set before 
us to prove the impossibility of sanc- 
tification, and to show the satisfying 
and humbling injfluence of human 
imperfection. Multitudes have made 



162 THE LARGER LIFE 

up their minds in advance that they 
never can have the fulness of Jesus 
beyond certain narrow Hmits, and. 
of course, fchey cannot advance be- 
yond their standards. Now we quite 
agree with the statement that no 
mere man can be holy or blameless, 
but the Lord Jesus is no mere man, 
and when He owns and keeps the 
heart it is a divine holiness and a 
divine keeping ; and we do assert 
that what no mere man can do the 
Hving Christ can do and does do for 
those who abide in Him. Let us 
take the divine measure, whatever 
man may think or say. 

Many also are ever looking to 
some human example, and, ^^measur- 
ing themselves by themselves and 



THE LARGER LlFEl 163 

comparing themselves among them- 
selves, are not wise." Either we shall 
find ourselves as good as somebody 
else and be content, or we shall be 
satisfied to be as some human ideal, 
and so shall stop short of the only 
perfect pattern. We shall never 
grow up to the measure of the Lord 
until we take the Lord's own word 
and character as our standard and 
ideal ; until we take our stand upon 
the sure and immutable ground that 
He who commands holiness expects 
us to be holy, and that He who prom- 
ises His own grace and all-sufficiency 
to enable us to meet His demands, 
will not excuse us if we fail. He 
has offered us Himself as the life 
and power of our obedience and 



164 THE LARGER LIFE 

holiness, and nothing less ihan His 
own perfect example should ever 
satisfy our holy ambition. Looking 
unto Him and pressing ever closer to 
His side and foot-prints, we shall be 
transformed into the same image, 
from glory to glory, and shall thus 
go from strength to strength. 

3. If we would be enlarged we 
must accept all that God sends us as 
His own divinely appointed means 
of developing and expanding our 
spiritual life. We are so content to 
abide on the old plane that God has 
often to compel us to rise to a higher 
level by bringing us face to face with 
situations which we cannot meet 
without greatly enlarged measures 
of His grace. To use a suggestive 



THE LARGER LIFE 165 

figure, He has to send the tidal wave 
to flood the lowlands where we 
dwell that we may be compelled to 
move to the hills beyond ;-or, to take 
a more scriptural and beautiful fig- 
ure^ like the mother bird, He has 
to break up our downy nest and to 
hurl us into empty space, where we 
must either learn to use an entirely 
new and higher method of support 
or sink into destruction. Thus He 
allowed the crisis of His terrible 
peril to close around Jacob on the 
night when he bowed at Peniel in 
supplication, in order to bring him 
to the place where he could take 
hold of God as he never would have 
done ; and forth from that narrow 
pass of peril Jacob came enlarged in 



166 THE LARGER LIFE 

his faith and knowledge of God, and 
in the power of a new and victorious 
life. He had to suffer Israel to be 
shut in at the Eed Sea that they 
might be compelled to take hold of 
God for their supernatural help^ or 
perish. He had to compel Davld^ by 
a long and painful discipline of 
years, to learn the almighty power 
and faithfulness of his God^ and to 
grow up into the established princi- 
ples of faith and godliness, which 
were indispensable for his subsequent 
and glorious career as the king of 
Israel. Nothing but the extremities 
in which Paul was constantly placed 
could ever have taught him, and 
taught the church through him, the 
full meaning of the great promise he 



THE LARGER LIFE 167 

SO learned to claim^ ^'My grace is 
sufficient for thee." And nothing 
but our trials and perils would ever 
have led some of us to know Him as 
we do, to trust Him as we liave, and 
to draw from Him the measures of 
grace which our very extl'emities 
made indispensable. 

Often He calls us to a work far be- 
yond our natural strength or endow- 
ments, but the emergency only 
throws us upon Him, and we always 
find Him equal to the need which His 
wisdom and providence have brought 
in our way. It is said that good Mrs. 
Booth, the great associate leader of 
the Salvation Army, and perhaps the 
most gifted Christian woman in 
England, was led into all her pub- 



168 THE LARGER LIFE 

lie work by being compelled unex- 
pectedly to face a large congregation 
and fill an appointment of which she 
had not dreamed. Two courses were 
open^ — one to shrink and evade the 
unexpected issue, the other to throw 
herself upon God for larger re- 
sources of wisdom, utterance and 
power. She was astonished at the 
answer which her Father gave as she 
went forward in simple confidence, 
and from that hour she dwelt in the 
large place of divine sufficiency and 
world-wide usefulness, into which 
she had almost been forced. 

Many of us can remember how in 
the beginning of our Christian work 
we ventured to accept positions of 
responsibility for which we felt we 



THE LARGER LIFE 169 

were inadequate, but, as we threw 
ourselves upon God and dared to go 
forward. His grace was sufficient. 
When a young minister of twenty- 
one, and just leaving my theological 
seminary, I had the choice of two 
fields of labor, — one an extremely 
easy one, in a delightful town with 
a refined, affectionate and prosper- 
ous church, just large enough to be 
an ideal field for one yv ho wished to 
spend a few years in quiet prepara- 
tion for future usefulness ; the other, 
a large, absorbing city church, with 
many hundred members, and over- 
whelming and heavy burdens, which 
were sure to demand Ihe utmost 
possible care, labor and rpsponsibili- 
ty. All my friends^ teachers and 



170 THE LARGER LIFE 

couD sellers advised me to take the 
easier place. But an impulse, which 
I now believe to have been, at least 
indirectly, from Grod, even though 
there must have been some human 
ambition in it, led me to feel that if 
I took the easier place I should 
probably rise to meet it and no more, 
and if I took the harder I should not 
rest short of all its requirements. I 
found it even so. My early ministry 
was developed and the habit of vent- 
uring on difficult undertakings was 
largely established, by the grace of 
God, through the necessities of this 
difficult position. 

Let us then, beloved, be willing 
to be enlarged, although it may 
involve many a sacrifice, many a 



THE LARGER LIFE 171 

peril, many a hazardous undertak- 
ing. 

4. If we would be enlarged let us 
take the Holy Ghost Himself to en- 
large us by filling us with His ful- 
ness. The highest enlargement is by 
the power of expansion. It is the in- 
coming wave which enlarges the little 
pool as it fills it, and then rolls back 
to the sea to return Vv^ith still larger 
fullnes and make yet ampler room. 
Nothing so sweeps away the little- 
ness of our conceptions of God, the 
pettiness of our faith, the narrow- 
ness of our love, the meanness of our 
self- consciousness, the insignificance 
of our work, as to be filled with His 
glorious presence, to look in His 
face, to feel the tides of His love, 



172 THE LARGER LIFE 

and to be thrilled with the touch of 
His own heart and its mighty 
thoughts and purposes for us and 
for the world for which He died. 
We need not say that the place to 
receive Him is the mercy seat. 
Waiting before Him in prayer, re- 
ceiving Him in communion, drinking 
deeper and deeper of His life and 
love, the vessel is not only filled but 
expanded, until we know something 
of the pra} er of the apostle in the 
third chapter of Ephesians, ^''that 
ye might be strengthened with might 
by His Spirit in the inner man ; that 
Christ may dwell in your hearts by 
faith ; that ye, being rooted and 
grounded in love, may be able to 
comprehend with all saints what is 



THE LARGER LIFE 1 To 

the length and breadth and depth 
and height^ and to know the love 
of God which passeth knowledge^ 
that ye might be filled with all the 
fulness of God." 

5. If we would be enlarged to the 
full measure of God's purpose, let us 
endeavor to realize something of our 
own capacities for His fillmg. We 
little know the size of the human 
soul and spirit. Never, until He re- 
news, cleanses and enters the heart 
can w^e have any adequate concep- 
tion of the possibilities of the being 
whom God made in His very image, 
and whom He now renews after the 
pattern of the Lord Jesus Himself. 
When we remember that God has 
made the human soul to be His 



174 THE LARGER LIFE 

temple and abode, and that He 
knows how to make the house that 
can hold His infinite fulness, we 
may be very sure that there are 
capacities in the human spirit which 
none of us have ever yet begun to 
realize. We know something of 
them as all our nature quickens into 
spring- tide life at the coming of the 
Holy Spirit, and as from time to 
time new baptisms awaken the dor- 
mant powers and susceptibilities that 
we did not know we possessed. 

But all this is but the begmning 
of an infinite possibility. Oh, how 
Ho has sometimes taken a low, 
coarse, brutal nature, that for years 
has seemed to possess no capacity 
except for crime and sensuality, and 



THE LARGER LIFE 175 

made it not only as pure bnt as 
bright as an aagel's mind, and 
brought forth from that brain, that 
voice, that tongue, that taste, that 
imagination, when illuminated and 
vivified by the Holy Ghost, such 
glorious fruitions as the life work 
of a Harry Moorhouse, the eloquence 
of a Eichard Weaver, the marvelous 
allegory of a John Bunyan, and the 
exquisite hymns and poems of a 
New^ton. 

Oh let us give Him the right to 
make the best of us, and, with 
wonder filled, w^e shall some day be- 
hold the glorious temple which He 
has reared, and shall say. '^Lord, 
what is man that Thou hast set 
Thine he^^rt upon Him ?" 



170 THE LARGER LIFE 

6. If we would rise to the full 
measure of God's standard for us, 
let us realize the magnitude of God 
as well as of our own being, for it is 
with nothing less than Himself that 
He means to fill us. Let us take in 
the full dimensions of His resources 
of grace, their length, their breadth, 
their depth, their height ; and then 
let us measure, if we can, the mag- 
nitude of God who is the living 
substance and personal source of all 
this grace, and we shall have some 
approximation at least to what the 
apostle means when He exclaims, 
''Now unto Him that is able to do 
exceeding abundantly above all 
that we ask or think, according to 
the power that worketh in us, unto 



THI! LARGER LIFE 177 

Him be glory in the church by 
Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, 
world without end. Amen." 

7. And, finally, let us remember that 
we have eternal years in which to 
develop all this divine ideal. Oh, 
could v^e see ourselves as we shall 
some day be, could we behold this 
morning that glorious creature that 
the universe shall some day come 
to behold in the image of the Son of 
God, could we see our faces shining 
as the sun in the kingdom of our 
Father, and hear the songs of rap- 
ture that will yet burst from our lips 
in higher notes than angels ever 
sung, w^e would wonder at the little- 
ness of our faith to day and our fear 
to ask our Father for the merest 



178 THE LARGER LIFE 

fraction in advance of our great in 
heritance. 

This is no picture of the imagina- 
tion. This is no soaring dream of 
hope or fancy, for He has told us 
that we shall be like Him when He 
shall appear. Oh, could we take 
you up to heaven this morning and 
let you gaze a single moment on the 
face of Jesus, shining ^^as the sun 
shineth in his strength ; " could we 
comprehend the infinite wisdom 
that this very moment is taking in 
tlio whole sweep of the universe in 
the grasp of His thought, listening 
to a thousand prayers at once, ad- 
ministering the government of in- 
numerable worlds, and yet at leisure 
to listen to our faintest cry ; could 



THE LARCER LIFE 179 

we measure His omnipotence as He 
holds in His hands the reins of uni- 
versal power and dominion ; could 
we stand the vision of His beauty 
and feel the thrill of His love in all 
its ecstatic power — we would have 
some conception of what we are our- 
selves yet to be : for ^^we shall know 
even as" we are known;" we shall 
share the work of His omnipotence ; 
we shall shine in all His beauty ; we 
shall reflect His moral perfections ; 
we shall sit with Him upon His 
throne ; we shall- be invested with 
His transcendent glory ; and all we 
receive of Him to-day is a mere in- 
stalment in advance of that which 
is already our own by right of inher- 
itance, and which shall be actually 



180 THEl LARGER LIFE 

realized as fast as we can take it 
in. We have eternity before us. 
Beloved^ let us rise to the height of 
such a prospect even here ; let us 
walk as those who dwell in heavenly 
places and share the resurrection and 
ascension life of their living Head. 

Rise with thy risen Lord, 

Ascend with Christ above, 
And in the heavenUes walk with Him 

Whom seeing not, you love. 

Look on your trials here 

As He beholds them now, 
Look on this world as it will seem 

When glory crowns your brow. 

Walk as a heavenly race, 

Princes of royal blood ; 
Walk as the children of the Lord, 

The sons and heirs of God. 



THE LARGER LiPE 18 1 

Pear not to take your place 

With Jesus on the throne, 
And bid ihe po^'rs of earth and hell 

His sovereign sceptre own. 

Your full redemption rights " 

With holy boldness claim, 
And to its utmost fulness prove 

The power of Jesus' name. 

Your life is hidden now, 

your glory none can see. 
But when He comes His bride will shine 

All glorious as He. 



c<?A^A£^ 



ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OE, THE 
DEATH OF SELF. 



^* jS^ot I but Christ. " Gal. ii: 20. 

^HE story of Abraham, Tshmael and 
4 Isaac is a parable, illustrating 
this text. The casting out of Ishmael 
is most clearly declared in this very 
epistle to be an allegory setting 
forth the spiritual experience of the 
believer when he dies to the law and 
sin through the cross of Jesus Christ, 
and comes into the resurrection life 
of his Eisen Loid. But there is 
someihing more than the experience 
of Ishmael and our deliverance from 



184 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OH^ 

the power of indwelling sin. In the 
patriarchal story^ this was followed 
by the offering up of Isaac on Mount 
Moriah, and there can be no doubt 
that this sets forth the deeper spir- 
itual experience into which the fully 
consecrated heart must come, when 
even the sanctified self is laid upon 
the altar like Isaac upon the mount 
and we become dead henceforth, not 
only to sin, but to that w^hich is 
worse than sin, even self. 

There is a foe whose hidden power 

The Christian well may fear ; 
More subtle far than inbred sin, 

And to the heart more dear. 
It is the power of selfishness, 

The proud and wilful I ; 
And e'er my Lord can live in me. 

My very self must die. 



THE DEATH OF SELF 185 

This is the lesson of Isaac's offer- 
ing and Paul's experience. " I have 
been crucified with Christ," that is 
the death of sin; ^^nevertheless I 
live/' that is the new Hfe in the 
power of His resurrection; ^^Yet 
not I, but Christ liveth in me," that 
is the offering of Isaac, the delirer- 
ance from self, and the substitution 
of Christ Himself for even the new 
self ; a substitution so complete that 
even the faith by which this life is 
maintained is no longer our self- 
sustained confidence but the very 
'^ faith of the Son of God who loved 
me and gave Himself for me," that 
is, instead of me, and as my Substi- 
tute. 



186 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 
I. THE FORMS OF SELF. 

We read in the book of Joshua of 
the three sons of Anak, who formed 
the Anakim, the race of giants who 
held the city of Hebron before Caleb's 
conquest, and were the terror of the 
Israelites. Literally Anak means 
long-necked, and represents pride, 
confidence, wilfulness, and self-suffi- 
ciency. The first of the Anakim 
may be called, 

1. Self-will, the disposition to rule, 
and especially to rule ourselves ; the 
spirit that brooks no other will and 
is its own law and god. Therefore 
the first step in the consecrated life 
is unconditional surrender. This is 
indispensable to break the power of 
sqK at the centre, and to establish 



THE DEATH OF SELF 187 

forever the absolute sovereignty of 
the will of God in the heart and life 
of the Christian. We cannot abide 
in hohness and we cannot be wholly 
used for God until self-will is so ut- 
terly crucified that we could not even 
think for an instant of acting con- 
trary to His will or without His 
orders. This is obedience^ and obe- 
dience is the law of the Christian 
life and must be absolute, unques- 
tioning, and without any possible 
exception. '^Ye are my friends if 
ye do whatsoever I command you." 
It is true that God requires of us 
in the life of faith the exercise of a 
very strong will continually, and 
there is no doubt that faith itself 
is largely the exercise of a sanctified 



188 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR^ 

and intensified will, but in order to 
this it is necessary that our will be 
wholly renounced and God's will in- 
variably accepted instead, and then 
we can put into it all the strength 
and force of our being, and will it 
even as God wills it, and because He 
wills it. In short, it is an exchanged 
will ; the despotic tyranny of Anak 
exchanged for the wise, beneficent 
yet still more absolute sovereignty 
of God. 

2. Self-confidence is the next of 
Anak's race. It is the spirit that 
draws its strength from self alone 
and disdains the arm of God and 
the help of His grace. In a milder 
form it is the spirit that trusts its 
own spiritual graces or virtues, its 



THE DEATH OF SELF 189 

morality perhaps^ its courage, its 
faith, its purity, its steadfastness, 
its joy, and its transitory emotions of 
hope, enthusiasm, or zeal. It is just 
as necessary to die to our self-suffi- 
ciency as to our self-will. If we do 
not we shall have many a fall and 
failure until w^e learn, with the most 
triumphant and successful labor- 
er thfi ever followed the footsteps of 
his Lord, that " we are not sufficient 
of ourselves to think anything as of 
ourselves, but our sufficiency is of 
God." The sanctified heart is not a 
self -constituted engine of power, but 
is just a set of wheels and pulleys 
that are absolutely dependent upon 
the great central engine whose force 
is necessary continually to move 



190 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

them. It is just a capacity to hold 
God ; just a vessel to be filled with 
His goodness, held and used by His 
hand ; just a possibility of which He, 
in His abiding life is constantly the 
motive power and impelling force. 
The word '^consecrate" in Hebrew 
means ''to fill the hand," and beau- 
tifully suggests the idea of an empty 
hand which God Himself must con- 
tinually fill. 

3. Self -glorying is the last and 
most impious of these Canaanitish 
tribes. He takes the very throne of 
Jehovah and claims the glory due 
unto Him alone. Sometimes it is a 
desire for human praise. Sometimes 
it is more subtle, the pride so proud 
that it will not stoop to care for the 



THE DEATH OF SELF 191 

approval of others, and its supreme 
delight is in its own self- conscious- 
ness and superiority, ability or good- 
ness. Metaphysicians have some- 
times made this happy distinction, 
that vanity is an inferior vice to 
pride. Vanity only seeks the 
praise of others but pride disdains 
the opinions of others and rests 
back in the complacent conscious- 
ness of its own excellency. What- 
ever its phase may be, the root and 
principle is the same. It is impious 
self, sitting on the throne of God, 
and claiming the honor and glory 
that belong to Him alone. 

These three forms of self are illus- 
trated by three very solemn examples 
iji the word of God. Saul the first 



192 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

king of Israel is a fearful monu- 
ment of the peril of self-will. His 
downward career began in a single 
act of disobedience, a disobedience 
which seemed to have respect to a 
mere question of detail, but which 
was really an act of self-will, a sub- 
stitution of his choice for God's ex- 
press command. The prophet Sam- 
uel characterizes his sin in these 
very expressive words, ' ' To obey is 
better than sacrifice, and to hearken 
than the fat of rams. For rebelhon 
is as the sin of witchcraft (or devil 
worship), and stubborness is as in- 
iquity and idolatry. Because thou 
hast rejected the word of the Lord, 
He hath also rejected thee from 
being king." It is evident from 



THE DEATH OF SELF 193 

these words that the very essense of 
Saul's sin lay in this element of will- 
fulness and stubborness which had 
dared to substitute his own ideas and 
preferences for the word of Jehovah. 
From this moment his obedience 
was necessarily quahfied and of 
course worthless^ and God sent His 
prophet to choose another king, 
who^ although full of human im- 
perfeciions, had this one thing on 
which God could fully depend, 
iiamel}^, a purpose to obey God when 
he fully understood His will. There- 
fore God calls David ^^aman after 
my own heart who shall perform all 
my w411." David made many mis- 
takes and committed many dark and 
terrible sins, but they were when 



1§4 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OK, 

under strong temptation and when 
blinded by passion and haste, but 
never with the purpose of disobey- 
ing God, or, at the time, with the 
consciousness that he was trans- 
gressing. The sad, sad story of 
Saul's downward descent and final 
and tragic ruin should be enough to 
make us tremble at the peril which 
lies before the willful soul, and to 
lead us to cry, ^^Not my will but 
thine be done." 

We have just as marked an in- 
stance of the peril of self-confidence 
in Simon Peter. Strong in his tran- 
sitory enthusiasm, and ignorant of 
the real weakness of his own heart, 
he honestly meant what he said, 
when he exclaimed ^'Though all men 



I^HE DEATH OF SELF 106 

should deny thee yet will I never 
deny thee." But alas! the shame- 
ful denial, the upbraiding look of 
Jesus, the bitter tears of penitence 
and the sad days of the crucifixion 
that followed had to teach him the 
lesson of his nothingness, and the ne- 
cessity of walking henceforth with 
downward head in the strength of the 
Lord alone. 

We are not left without as vivid 
and impressive an object lesson of 
the last form of self-will — the pride 
that glories in its own achievements 
or excellencies. '^Is not this great 
Babylon that I have built ? " cries 
Nebuchadnezzar, in the hour of his 
triumph, as he looks upon that splen- 
did city, which was indeed a paragon 



196 iSHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

of human glory^ and surveys in his 
imagination the mightier empire of 
which it was the metropohs^ an em- 
pire which hterally comprised the 
world. If mortal could ever have 
cause to glory in earthly magnifi- 
cence, Nebuchadnezzar had, for God 
Himself had compared him and his 
kingdom to a majestic head of gold 
and had symbolized his power under 
the figure of a winged lion, combin- 
ing the majesty and sovereignty of 
the eagle and the lion in one splen- 
did image. But the very instant that 
vain-glorious word reached the ears 
of God, the answer fell from heaven 
like a knell of judgment, ^^ The king- 
dom is departed from thee. And 
they shall drive thee from men and 



THE DEATH OF SELF 197 

thy dwelling shall be with the beasts 
of the field, till thou know that the 
Most High ruleth in the kingdom of 
men, and giveth it to whomsoever 
He will.'' This is the glorying of the 
carnal heart, but even the follower 
of God may mingle his own self- 
seeking and his own honor with his 
work for God and thus impair his 
usefulness and lose his own recom- 
pense. 

There is not a more pitiful picture 
in the long panorama of the Bible 
than that morbid and grumbling 
prophet, sitting outside the gates of 
Nineveh under a withered gourd, his 
face blistered and swollen with the 
scorching sun and his eyes red with 
useless weeping; asking God that he 



198 ISBMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

might die, because his ministry had 
been dishonored; and presenting a 
spectacle of ridiculous melancholy 
and chagrin while all around him 
millions were rejoicing and praising 
God for the mercy which had just 
delivered them from an awful catas- 
trophe. Poor Jonah ! God had given 
him the most honorable ministry ever 
yet accorded to a human being. The 
first foreign missionary, he had been 
sent to preach to the mightiest em- 
pire on the face of the globe and the 
imperial city of the world^ proud 
Nineveh ! His preaching had been 
successful as no mortal ever had suc- 
ceeded. The whole city was lying 
prostrate on their faces at the footstool 
of mercy in penitence and prayer 



THE DEATH OF SELF 199 

through his words, and the nation's 
heart, for a moment at least, was 
turned to God. And yet so full of 
himself had all his work been, so ut- 
terly was he absorbed in his own 
credit, reputation and honor, that 
when God listened to the penitent 
cries of the Ninevites and revoked 
the sentence which Jonah himself 
had uttered, and rendered his proph- 
ecy null and void, so that instead of 
his word coming to pass he himself 
would probably be afterwards ridi- 
culed as a fanatic and idle alarmist, 
poor Jonah became disgusted and ex- 
asperated and like a petted child went 
out and threw himself upon his face 
on the ground and asked God to kill 
him, just because He had by His 



200 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

mercy spoiled his reputation as a 
true prophet. He could not see, as 
God did, the unspeakable horror and 
anguish that had been averted. He 
could not see the joy of the divine 
heart in exercising mercy and in 
hearing the penitent cries of the peo- 
ple. He could not see the great prin- 
ciple of grace which underlies the 
divine threatenings. He could not 
see that great- souled pity, that felt 
for the one hundred and twenty 
thousand infant children of the great 
capital, or the dumb brutes, which 
would have moaned in their dying 
agony, if Nineveh had fallen. 

All he could see was Jonah's repu- 
tation as a true prophet or what peo- 
ple might say when they found that 



THE DEATH OF SELF 201 

his word had not come to pass; and 
with that one httle worm gnawing at 
the root^ his peace and happiness, 
like his own gourd, withered away 
and God had to set him up as a sort 
of dried specimen of selfishness, to 
show the meanness and misery of the 
self -life that mingles its own glory 
with the sacred work of the glorious 
God, and which, ever since the days 
of Jonah, has rendered it impossible 
for God to use many a gifted man, 
and has blighted the church of Christ 
and rendered vain the ministry of 
thousands because God could not use 
them without giving to men the gloiy 
which He will never give to another. 
God had tried to kill Jonah before He 
sent him to Nineveh, for He knew 



202 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

the secret bane of his heart and, so He 
immersed him for three days and 
nights in the sea and buried him in 
the bowels of a whale ; but out of 
that Jonah came, as a great many 
other people come out of the experi- 
ence of sanctification, with a big 
self, supreme even in the sin-cleansed 
soul. Oh let us hf t up the heart-felt 
prayer, 

O to be saved from myself, dear Lord, 

O to be lost in Thee ! 
O that it may be no more I 

But Christ that lives in me ! 

II. THE EFFECTS OF SELF. 

1. It dishonors God and sets up a 
rival on His throne. The devil was 
not altogether a liar when he said to 



THE DEATH OF SELF 203 

our first parents, ^^Ye shall be as 
gods." This is just what fallen man 
tries to be. a god unto himself. This 
is the essence of the sin of selfish- 
ness, that it puts man in the place of 
God by making him a law and an 
end unto himself. Whenever any 
person acts, either because it is his 
own selfish will, or for his own self- 
interest, purely as an end, he is claim- 
ing to be his own god and directly 
disobeying the first commandment, 
^^Thou shalt have no other gods be- 
sides me." Moreover, in assuming 
the place of God, he is doing it in a 
spirit the very opposite of God's, for 
God is love", and love fs the very op- 
posite of selfishness. He is thus 
mimicking God and proving, at the 



204 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

same time, his utter unfitness to oc- 
cupy His throne by his unhkeness to 
Him. 

2. It leads to every other sin and 
brings back the whole power of the 
carnal nature. For while self alone 
attempts to keep the heart it finds sin 
and Satan too strong. A self-perfec- 
tion is not possible for any man. 
There must be more than ^'I" before 
there can be victory. In the seventh 
of Eomans the apostle tell us what 
^^I, myself" can do and that is, in- 
effectually struggle. In the eighth 
it is what ^^ Christ in me "can do, 
and that is victory and everlasting 
love. The man or woman who only 
goes so far as to receive Adamic pur- 
ity^ if such a thing be included in the 



THE DEATH OF SELF 205 

Gospel at all, will soon have the next 
chapter of Adamic history, and that 
is the temptation and fall. But the 
man who receives Christ to dwell 
within and keep the heart by His 
mighty pcfwer, shall rise 'Ho the 
measure of the stature of the fulness 
of Christ." 

3. The self- life leads back to the 
dominion of Satan. Satan's own fall 
began probably in a form of self-love. 
Made to be dependent on God every 
moment, probably he became inde- 
pendent ; and contemplating his own 
perfection, and thinking it was some- 
thing that was his own, he became 
separated from God, and then inevit- 
ably fell into rebelhon against him 
and eternal rivalry, disobedience and 



206 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

all that can be the opposite of the di- 
vine and the holy. And so still, any 
soul that becomes self -constituted or 
occupied with its own virtues, and 
tries to be independent of Jesus, 
either as the source of its strength or 
the supreme end of its being, will fall 
under the power of Satan and share 
his awful descent. Where can we 
find a sadder illustration of the end 
of self than in the story of Saul. He 
began with Saul and ended with Sa- 
tan. The first chapter is self-will, 
the last is the awful night at Endor 
and the bloody day of death and ruin 
on Mount Gilboa. 

4. It is fatal to the spirit of love 
and harmony. It is the opposite of 
love and the source of strife, bigotry^ 



THE DEATH OF SELF 207 

suspicion, sectarianism, envj, jeal- 
ousy and the whole race of social sins 
and grievances that afflict the Chris- 
tian life and the church of God. It 
is the mother of the strifes and sec- 
tarianisms of the church from the 
very beginning. Where it prevails 
there can be no true unit)^, no happy 
co-operation. You never can have a 
harmonious church or a happy family 
where self is predominant in the 
hearts of the people. The very se- 
cret of Christian co-operation and 
happy church life is '^forbearing one 
another in love/' endeavoring to keep 
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of 
peace, ^^ in honor preferring one an- 
other." 
5. It mars our work for God. Self- 



208 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

will will try to force the chariots of 
God's power and grace upon our own 
side-tracks and that God will never 
permit. Self-confidence will seek to 
build up the kingdom of Christ by 
human means and unsanctified in- 
strumentalities, and presume to go 
where God has not sent and to do 
what God has not qualified us by His 
Holy Spirit to do. The result is, it is 
but crude work, defiled by worldli- 
ness and sin, impermanent and un- 
fruitful, as much of the Christian 
work of to-day is, in all the churches 
of Christ. And above all others, the 
spirit of self -glorying will try to use 
the pulpit, the organ gallery, the 
subscription books, the religious pa- 
per, the charitable scheme, the very 



TEE DEATH OF SELI* 209 

mission for winning souls, as a chan- 
nel for developing some brilliant char- 
acter, or to glorify some rich man or 
woman, or minister to the spiritual 
self-sufficiency of some successful 
worker ; and God is disgusted with 
the spirit of idolatry, and His Holy 
Spirit turns away grieved for the 
honor of Jesus. Until we are so 
yielded to our Master that He and He 
alone can be glorified in our work, 
the Lord cannot trust us with much 
service for Him or it will simply be- 
come the pinnacle of the temple from 
which the devil will hurl us down. 

6. Self makes us unhappy. It is a 
root of bitterness in every heart 
where it reigns. The secret of joy is 
hidden in the bosom of love, and the 



210 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

arms of self are too short ever to 
reach it. Not until we dwell in God 
and God in us and learn to find our 
happiness in being lost in Him and 
living for His glory and for His peo- 
ple, shall we ever know the sweets 
of divine blessedness. All the v/orld 
cannot fill this hungry heart. All 
our spiritual treasures only corrupt 
if we hoard them for ourselves. 
Only water that runs is living water. 
And only when it is poured into 
other empty vessels does it become 
wine. The self-willed man is always 
a miserable man. He gets his own 
way and does not enjoy it, and wishes 
after he has had it, that he had never 
got it, for it usually leads him over 
a precipice. The self-sufficient man 



THE DEATH OF SELF 211 

can never know the springs which 
he outside his own httle heart, and 
the self-glorying man, like poor 
Herod, is eaten of the worms of cor- 
ruption and remorse with which God 
always feeds the impious soul that 
dares to claim the honors due to Him 
alone. 

7. Self-love always leads to a 
fall. The boasted wisdom must be 
proved to be foolishness. The proud 
arm must be laid, like Pharaoh's, in 
the dust. The self-sufficient boast, 
like Peter's, must be answered by his 
won failure. The disobedient path 
which refuses God's wise and holy 
will, must be proved to be a 
false way. Every idol must be 
abolished, every high thing brought 



212 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

low, and no flesh glory in His pres- 
ence. 

Oh, beloved, if you are going on in 
your own will, your own strength, 
for your own gratification and glory, 
beware ! Thorns lie in your path- 
way, serpents lurk beneath your feet, 
yawning abysses, perilous precipices, 
angry tempests, midnight darkness, 
many a sorrow, many a tear, many a 
fall, await you. ^^ He that trusteth 
in his own heart is a fool." ^^ There 
is a way that seemeth right unto a 
man but the ends thereof are the 
ways of death." ^ 

Oh, let us ask our faithful God to 
save us from this tyrant that dishon- 
ors God, that leads us into captivity 
to Satan, that withers love, mars the 



THE DEATH OF SELF 213 

work of God, poisons all our happi- 
ness, and plunges us into failure and 
ruin ; and so to show us that we are 
nothing, that we shall be glad to 
have Christ live in us, bur ^^all in 
all." 

III. THE REMEDY FOR SELF. 

1. God often has to let self have its 
way until it cures us effectually by 
showing us the misery and failure 
which it brings. This is the only 
good there is in our own struggling, 
that it shows us the vanity of the 
struggle and prepares us the more 
quickly to surrender to God. And so 
sometimes even our disobedience is 
over-ruled to make us fear to repeat 
the experiment or to venture again 



214 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

one step beyond our Father's will. 
Let us beware, however, how we at- 
tempt the experiment ourselves for 
there is always one step too far ever 
to return. 

2. God has placed around us the 
blessed restraints of other hearts and 
lives as checks upon our selfishness, 
and links, which almost compel us to 
reach beyond ourselves and w^ork 
with and live for others. Ho has 
made no man independent of his 
brethren. '^ We are fitly framed to- 
gether" and so.grow into a hoi}" tem- 
ple in the Lord. We are adjusted, 
bone to His bone, and, by that w^hich 
every joint supplieth, the body is 
ministered unto and groweth into 
the fulness of His stature. The 



The death of self 215 

church of Christ is no autocracy 
where one man can be a dictator or 
a judge, but a fellowship where One 
alone is Master. Any work which 
develops into a one-man' despotism 
becomes withered. It is true that 
God has ranks of workers but they 
are all harmonious and linked in 
heavenly love. The man who cannot 
work with his brethren in mutual 
Comfort and harmony has something 
yet to learn in his own Christian life. 
True, God does not require us to work 
with unsanctified men ; but there are 
plenty of sanctified ones, thank God, 
to-day, where any earnest heart can 
find a congenial fellowship of serv- 
ice ; and while He will teach any of 
us by ourselves, and wants us to be 



216 ISttMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

independent of our brethren in the 
sense of leaning on them instead of 
God, yet He does require that we 
should be able to co-operate with them 
for God, submitting ourselves one to 
another in the fear of God, one sow- 
ing and another reaping, and both 
rejoicing together, '^bearing one an- 
other's burdens and so fulfilling the 
law of Christ," ^'true yoke-fellows." 
And so by innumerable phrases and 
figures He has taught us the blessed 
truth of Christian co-operation in the 
spirit of self-renunciation and mutual 
confidence and love. Let us receive 
these blessed lessons and helps and 
let Him so slay in us the self -assert- 
ing ^^I" that we can be true yoke- 
fellows, and like David's men^ be 



THE DEATH OF SELF 217 

able to ^^keep rank" in the great 
host of God. 

3. The love of Jesus is the divinely 
appointed prescription for the death 
of self. Paul expresses it beauti- 
fully, ''We thus judge that if one 
died for all then were all dead. And 
that He died for all that they which 
live should not henceforth live unto 
themselves, but unto Him that died 
for them and rose again." 

Many of us have seen at some time 
a young, beautiful, petted, luxarious 
and selfish girl, growing up sur- 
rounded with wealth, affection, ad- 
miration, adulation, until she was 
wholly spoiled, and became the cen- 
tre of the circle in which she lived, 
her whole being perverted by her sel- 



218 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC; OR, 

fishness. But we have seen that girl 
years afterwards, and we would not 
have known her had we not traced 
the intermediate steps. She was now 
a self-denying, loving wife and moth- 
er, her whole being devoted to the 
happiness of that husband whose 
fortunes she had followed amid pov- 
erty, obscurity and separation from 
all her former friends ; sharing his 
penury, toiling for his comfort, and 
nursing as a faithful and loving 
mother, the little children who had 
come into her arms, with Ihe love 
that never wearied, that felt no task 
too hard, and no work too menial. 
What has made all the difference ? 
What has cast out that idol, self, from 
its throne? Nothing but love. That 



THE DEATH OF SELF 21-9 

man has won her heart. He has 
come in and taken the place that it 
had occupied ; it is cast out and he 
reigns. 

That is the simple story of the 
death of self in the Christian life. It 
is the love of Jesus that has excluded 
it, and never, until we become fas- 
cinated with His affection, and won 
in complete captivity to His love, 
shall we cease lo live unto ourselves. 
Then, like that girl, we will follow 
Him anywhere. We will toil and 
suffer with Him. We will be con- 
tent without many things that before 
we thought we must have, because 
His smile is our sunshine, His pres- 
ence is our joy, His love, shed abroad 
in our hearts, is our heaven, and we 



220 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR, 

cannot speak or think of sacrifice or 
suffering, our heart is so satisfied 
with Him. 

Beloved, if you would die to self 
you must fall in love with Jesus and 
let Him become to you the personal 
reality of Solomon's sweet Song in 
which the whole heart summers into 
aland of Beulah and a ^^Hephzibah" 
of joy. 

4. But it is not the love of Christ 
merely that we want ; it is the living 
Christ Himself. Many people have 
touches of the love of Christ, but He 
is a Christ away up in heaven. The 
apostle speaks of something far 
mightier. It is Christ Himself who 
lives inside and who is big enough to 
crowd out and keep out the little ^^L" 



THE DEATH OF SELF 221 

There is no other that can truly lift 
and keep the heart above the power 
of self but Jesus, the Mighty Lord, 
the stronger than the strong man 
armed, who taketh away his armour 
wherein he trusted and spoileth all 
his goods and then takes forever the 
heart that has given him its goods. 
Blessed Christ ! He is able not only 
for sin, sorrow and sickness, but He 
is able for you and me, — able so to 
be our very life, that moment by mo- 
ment we shall be conscious that He 
in us fills us with Himself and con- 
quers the self that ruled before. The 
more you try to fight a self -thought 
the more it clings to you. The mo- 
moment you turn away from it and 
look to Him, He fills all the con- 



222 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR^ 

sciousness and disperses everything 
with His own presence. Let us abide 
in Him and we shall find there is 
nothing else to do. 

5. It is almost the same things but 
another way of saying it, that the 
baptism and indwelling of the Holy 
Grhost within us will deliver and keep 
us from the power of self. When 
the cloud of glory entered the taber- 
nacle there was no room for Moses 
to remain ; and when filled with the 
heavenly presence of the blessed 
Spirit we are lost in God and self 
hides away, and like Job we can say, 
^' Now mine eye seeth thee. Where- 
fore I abhor myself and repent in 
dust and ashes." 

Beloved, these temples were reared 



THE DEATH OF SELF 223 

for Him. Let Him fill them so com- 
pletely that^ like the oriental temple 
of glass in the ancient legend, the 
temple shall not be seen^ but only 
the glorious sunlight, which not only 
shines into it, but through it, and the 
transparent walls are all unseen. 

It is not a new, but it is an appro- 
priate thought, that all the things 
that God has used have first been 
sacrificed. It ^is a sacrificed Sav- 
iour, One who emptied Himself, and 
made Himself of no reputation that 
God has so highly exalted, and given 
Him a name that is above every 
name, ^Hhat at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven and things in earth and things 
under the earth, " It was a sacrificed 



224 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC ; OR^ 

Isaac that God made the promised 
seed and the progenitor of Israel's 
tribes. And it was on that very 
Mount Moriah where Isaac was sac- 
rificed, that God afterwards reared 
His glorious temple. And so it is 
only when our Isaac is on the altar 
and our whole being lost in God that 
He can lay the deep foundations and 
rear the everlasting walls of the liv- 
ing temple of which He is the Su- 
preme and eternal glory. 

I look back to-day with unuttera- 
ble gratitude to the lonely and sor- 
rowful night, when, mistaken in 
many things, and imperfect in all, 
my heart's first full consecration was 
made, and not knowing but that it 
would be death in the most literal 



THE DEATH OF SELF 225 

sense before the morning light, yet 
with unreserved surrender I first 
could say, 

'* Jesus I my cross have taken, 
All to leave and follow thee ; 

Destitute, despised, forsaken. 
Thou from hence my All shalt be." 

Never perhaps has my heart known 
quite such a thrill of joy as when the 
following Sabbath morning I gave 
out those lines and sung them with 
all my heart. And if God has been 
pleased to make my life in aay meas- 
ure a little temple for His indwelling 
and for His glory, and if He ever shall 
be pleased to use me in any fuller 
measure, it has been because of that 
hour, and it will be still in the meas- 
ure in which that hour is made the 



226 ISHMAEL AND ISAAC 

key-note of a consecrated, crucified 
and Christ-devoted life. 

Oh, beloved, come and let Him 
teach you the superlative degree of 
joy, the joy that has learned to say 
not only, ^^My beloved is mine," but 
better even, ^^I am my Beloved's;" 
and we shall find as one of our dear 
missionaries in China used to say, 
'^He is willing to come into the 
heart of every one of us and love us 
to death." 



cd(^^s^ 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS.'' 



"Nay, in all these things we are more 
than conquorers through Him that loved 



'pT IS a" great thing to be a con- 
^ queror in Christian life and con. 
flict. It is a much greater thing to 
be a conqueror ^^ in all these things " 
which the apostle names, a perfect 
host of trials, troubles and foes. But 
what does it mean to be ^^more than 
conqueror ? " 

I. It means to have a decisive 
victory. There are some victories 
that cost nearly as much as defeats, 



228 ''MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 

and a few more such triumphs would 
annihilate us. There are some battles 
which have to be renewed again and 
again until we*, are exhausted with 
the ceaseless strife. Many a Christ- 
ian is kept in constant warfare 
through lack of courage to venture 
on a bold and final contest and end 
the strife by a decisive victory. It is 
blessed so to die that we are dead in- 
deed ; so to yield that the last strand 
of the heart's reluctance is severed ; 
so to say ^^no " to the enemy that he 
will never repeat the solicitation. 
There are decisive battles in the 
world's history^ conflicts whose issues 
settle the future of an empire or of a 
world, and the soul has such battles 
too. God is able to give us the grace 



^•'more than conquerors" 229 

so to win in a few encounters that 
there shall be no doubt about the 
side on which the victory falls and 
no danger of the contest ever being 
renewed again. Other battles we 
may have and shall have, but surely 
it is possible for us to settle the 
questions that meet us, one by one, 
and settle them forever. 

Beloved, are not some of you 
weakened by this indecisiveness in 
your views of truth, in your steps of 
faith, in your refusals of temptation, 
in your surrender to God, in your 
consecration to His service and your 
obedience to His special call ? You 
have been just uncertain enough to 
keep the question open and tempt 
the adversary to renew the conflict 



230 '^MORE THAN CONQUERORS ^^ 

evermore. We sometimes read in 
God's word after one of David's hard- 
est conflicts, or one of Joshua's bold- 
est triumphs, ^^the land had rest 
from war ! " Thus we have rest by 
becoming ^^more than conquerors 
through Him that loved us." 

II. It is to have such a victory as 
will effectually break the adversary's 
power and not only defend us from 
his attacks but effectually weaken 
and destroy his strength. This is 
one of the purposes of temptation, 
that we may be workers together 
with God in destroying evil. We 
read of Joshua's battles that ^^it was 
of the Lord that these kings should 
come against Joshua in battle for 
this very purpose, that they might 



'^MORE THAN COKQUERORS '' 231 

be utterly destroyed." It was not 
enough for Israel to beat them off 
and be saved from their attacks^ but 
Godwanted them exterminated. And 
so when God allows the enemy to 
appear in our lives it is that we may 
do him irreparable and eternal in- 
jury, and thus glorify God and be 
workers with Christ in destroying 
the works of the devil. For this pur- 
pose God frequently brings to light 
in our own litres and in our w^ork for 
God, evils that were concealed, not 
that they might crush us, but that 
we might put them aside. But for 
their discovery and resistance they 
might still have remained unrevealed 
and some day have broken out with 
fatal effectiveness. But God allows 



232 '^MORE THAN CONQUERORS^' 

them to be provoked into activity in 
order to challenge our resistance and 
lead to our agressive and victorious 
advance against them. Therefore 
when we find anything in our ow^n 
hearts and lives, or in connection 
with the work of our Master com- 
mitted to our hands w^hich seems to 
threaten our triumph or His work, 
let us remember that God has allowed 
it to confront us, that, in His name, it 
might be forever put aside and rend- 
ered powerless to injure or oppose 
again. 

Beloved, are we thus fighting the 
good fight of faith, resisting the devil 
and rising up for God against them 
that do wickedly ? Are we looking 
upon our adversaries and our ob- 



^'more than conquerors" 233 

stacles as things that have come, not 
to crush us, but to be put aside and 
become tributarj^ to our successes 
and our Master's glory ? Thus shall 
we be'^more than conquerors through 
Him that loved us, " and as the prophet 
beautifully expresses it, '^Behold, all 
they that were incensed against thee 
shall be ashamed and confounded : 
they shall be as nothing ; and they 
that strive with thee shall perish. 
Thou shalt seek them and shall not 
find them, even them that contended 
with thee : they that war against 
thee shall be as nothing and as a 
thing of naught." 

III. It is to have such a victory 
as brings actual benefit out of the 
battle and makes it tributary to our 



234 ''mork than conquerors" 

own and our Master's cause. It is 
possible in a certain sense to take 
our enemies prisoners and make them 
fight in our ranks, or at least do the 
menial work of our camp. It is pos- 
sible to get such good out of Satan's 
assaults that he shall actually become 
our ally without intending it and 
shall find with eternal chagrin that 
he has been doing us real service. 
Doubtless he thought, when he stirred 
up Pharaoh to murder the little chil- 
dren of the Hebrews that he was ex- 
terminating a race of which he was 
afraid. But that very act of his 
brought Moses into Pharaoh's house 
and raised up a deliverer for Israel and 
the destroyer of Pharaoh. Surely that 
was being ^^more than conqueror ! " 



(( 



MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 235 



The devil was not only beaten but 
made to work in the Lord's chain- 
gang as a galley slave. Again, he 
overmatched himself when he insti- 
gated Haman to build his lofty gal- 
lows and send forth the decree for 
Israel's extermination, for he had 
the misery of seeing Haman hang on 
those gallows and Israel delivered. 
So again, no doubt, he put the Hebrew 
children into the furnace and Daniel 
into the den of lions hoping to de- 
stroy the last remnant of godliness 
on the earth, but lo ! these heroes were 
^^more than conquerors." Not only 
did they escape their destroyer, 
but theii' deliverance led to the 
proclamation of Nebuchadnezzar, 
magnifying the truth of God through 



236 ''MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 

the entire Babylonian empire^ and to 
the similar confession of Darius, 
recognizing God throughout all the 
confines of the still greater Persian 
empire. Surely Satan was more 
than beaten that time ! 

His most audacious attempt was 
the crucifixion of our Lord, and all 
hell, no doubt, held high jubilee on 
that dark afternoon when Jesus sank 
to death ; but lo ! the cross has be- 
come the weapon by which Satan's 
head is already bruised and his king- 
dom is yet to be exterminated. So 
God makes him forge the weapons 
of his own destruction, and hurl the 
thunderbcits that fall back upon his 
own head. So may we ever thus 
turn his fiercest assaults to our ad- 



^'more than conquerors" 237 

vantage^ and to the glory of our 
King. 

It is very interesting to look at the 
old frontispiece in Wickliffe's Bible, 
where a group of figures .are gath- 
ered round a fire which is bursting 
through the open pages of a holy 
Bible. Their countenances all v\^ear 
a look of consternation, and with 
one consent they are gathered round 
the fire, trying to blow it out. There 
are bishops and archbishops of the 
church of Eome, and the devil at 
the head of the crowd, all blowing 
lustily with swollen cheeks and 
strained countenances. But lo ! the 
more they blow the more it burns, 
until at last the fierce blaze leaps up 
so high and out so far and wide that 



238 ^'more than conquerors'' 

they are obliged to shrink back, and 
even Satan himself, though used to 
such an atmosphere, is glad to escape 
from its consuming flame. So let us 
overcome and more than overcome 
our spiritual foes. 

The best thing they do for us 
often is the discipline they bring us 
in our spiritual life. In this way, 
and in this alone, do we learn to 
exercise victorious faith and endure 
hardness as good soldiers of Jesus 
Christ. The two things that the 
Christian needs most are the power 
to believe and the power to suffer, 
and these the enemy often comes to 
teach us. Not until we are ready 
to sink beneath the pressure do we 
often learn the secret of triumph. 



'^MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 239 

It was a great thing for the Amer- 
ican nation that she had the Mexican 
War before she had the War of the 
Rebelhon. It was there that her 
officers were trained and fitted to 
lead the armies of the greater strug- 
gle. So tiie Lord lets the devil act 
as drill sergeant in His army, and 
teach His children the use of His 
spiritual weapons. So we may 
^^ count it all joy when we fall into 
divers temptations ; knowing that 
the trying of our faith worketh 
patience." 

This indeed is to be '^more than 
conqueror/' to learn such lessons 
from the enemy as will fit us for his 
next assults and prepare us to meet 
him without fear of defeat. There 



240 ''more than conquerors'^ 

are some things that cannot easily 
be learned. Our spiritual senses 
seem to require the pressure of dif- 
ficulty and suffering to awaken all 
their capacities and to constrain us to 
prove the full resources of heavenly 
grace. God's school of faith is 
always is trial, and God's school of 
love is provocation and wrong. In- 
stead therefore of murmuring against 
our lot and wondering why we are- 
permitted to be so tried^let us glorify 
God and put our adversary to shame 
by wringing a blessing from Satan's 
hate and hell's hostility, and we 
shall find after a while that the 
enemy will be glad to let us alone 
for his own sake if not for ours. 
IV, To be ^^more than con- 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'^ 241 

queror" is not only to have the 
victory, but the speils of victory. 
When Jehoshaphat's army won 
their great deliverance from the 
hordes of Moab and Ammon, it took 
them three days to gather all the 
spoils of their enemies' camps. 
When David captured the camp of 
Ziklag's destroyers he won so vast a 
booty that he was able to send rich 
presents over all Israel among his 
brethren. When the lepers found 
their way to the deserted camp of 
the Syrians they found such abund- 
ance that in a single hour the famine 
of Samaria was turned into satiety. 
And so our spiritual conflicts and 
conquests have their rich reward in 
the treasures recovered from the 



242 ''more than conquerors'' 

hands of the enemy. How many 
things there are which Satan pos- 
sesses which we might and should 
enjoy ! Oh the rich dehght which 
fills the heart when we expel the 
giants of ill-temper, irritation, haste, 
hatred, malice and envy who long 
have ravaged and preyed upon all the 
sweetness of our life. What a lux- 
uriant land we now enter into, when 
we overcome these foes, and how de- 
lightfully the spoils of peace and love 
and sweetness and heavenly joy are 
enriching us in the very things where 
once they reigned ! How rich the 
spoils recovered from the cruel ad- 
versary when through the name of 
Jesus he is driven from our body, 
and the suffering frame which had 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'' 243 

groaned and trembled under his op- 
pression springs into health and 
freedom and yields all the fulness of 
its strength to the service of God and 
the joy of a victorious hfe. . Oh, the 
rich reward that comes to the home 
that has been rescued from the 
dominancy of the devil, perhaps in 
the form of drunkenness in a hus- 
band and father, or of shameful lust, 
or sinful vanity, or empty frivolity, 
or heartless worldliness, or bitter 
strife, evil speaking and anger in 
some other heart, and life once 
more becomes a happy Eden, with 
love and peace enthroned by the 
hearth and altar of a Christian home. 
Oh, the rich spoils that are to come 
from a world rescued from the hand 



244: ^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS ^^ 

of its cruel usurper. How it will 
bloom again in beauty, fruitfulness 
and blessedness, and yield its riches 
to its benignant and rightful King 
and to those who dare to conquer 
it for Him and shall share with Him 
its happy Millennial sway. 

God takes special delight in mak- 
ing that a blessing to us which has 
been recovered from Satan's power. 
The two mightiest strong holds of 
ancient Canaan were Hebron and 
Zion. The former was the seat of 
the Anakim, the giant chieftains of 
Canaan ; but the brave heroic Caleb 
dared to challenge them in their 
lair, and in the strength of God was 
**'more than conqueror" over their 
terrific strength, and won the 



^^MORE THAN conquerors'' 245 

heights of Hebron as his special in- 
heritance. But not only did he re- 
ceive the dear old city of Abraham 
as his portion and spoil^ but God took 
peculiar delight in subsequently 
blessing and honoring this very 
place, it would seem, just because it 
had been snatched from the very 
jaws of the enemy ; for Hebron was 
the chosen seat where David's throne 
was subsequently established, and 
where God began the kingdom of 
Israel which He Himself is yet to 
rule in the coming age of Israel's 
restoration. 

Still more defiant was the strength 
of the citadel of Zion. It was the 
last stronghold that the Canaanites 
relinquished. All through the days 



'24:6 ^^MORE THAN CONQUEROfes'* 

of Joshua and his successors they 
succeeded in holding it ; all through 
the centuries of the Judges, all 
through the days of Saul, all through 
the early days of even David's king- 
dom. The fortress was impregnable 
so that the haughty Canaanites told 
their enemies in scorn that they 
would only deign to garrison it with 
the blind and the lame and they 
challenged them to capture it from 
its feeble and crippled defenders. 
But David met the challenge and 
Joab executed it by a glorious as- 
sault and took by storm the heights 
of Zion from the last chieftains of 
Canaan. Then it was that Is- 
rael found its true metropolis and 
the rescued stronghold was set apart 



^^ MORE THAN conquerors'' 2i7 

by God Himself to be the very seat 
of the sacred kingdom and the 
monument of the glorious victory 
which had been achieved. There it 
was that David reigned; there it 
was that Solomon in all his glory 
swayed his glorious sceptre ; there 
it was that the temple rose from the 
adjoining heights of Moriah full in 
view of Zion ; there it is that Jesus 
is coming soon to reign once more. 
Oh, how rich and glorious the recom- 
pense of a single victory ! How dif- 
ferent the world's history if the old 
Canaanites had still been permitted 
to hold the heights of Jebus ! 

Beloved, the richest treasure of 
your life is held by Satan. He is 
too shrewd to waste his strength 



248 ^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'^ 

upon what is worthless. He has 
put his hand upon the sweetest, 
dearest and most precious things of 
life, and whether in your heart, in 
your home, or in your circle of ac- 
quaintance, there you may be sure 
there is a Hebron or a Zion that God 
wants you to overcome, and in over- 
coming which you shall find the 
richest inheritance of your life and 
your eternity, and shall forever say 
with rejoicing, as you realize the 
full meaning of your victory, '^ more 
than conqueror through Him that 
loved us." 

V. '^More than conquerors" 
means not only the spoils of war 
and triumph over all the assaults of 
our foes, but it means new territory, 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 249 

aggressive warfare, and positive and 
ever larger conquests for the glory 
of our Lord and the salvation of 
others. Merely to beat back your 
foes is but a small part of the 
great commission of the Christian 
soldier. He is called not only to 
wield the shield of faith but 
also the sword of the Spirit by 
which he moves against the con- 
quered foe and claims new terri- 
tory with each advance. We have 
the armor of righteousness on the 
right hand and on the left. The 
armor on the left is for defence, 
but the armor on the right is for 
aggression. We are called, not only 
to ^^ withstand in the evil day/' but 
to go forth and reclaim the world for 



250 '^MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 

Christ. Such conflicts meet us in 
our Christian work at every step, in 
the souls we seek to win for Jesus, 
in the progress of truth, the spread 
of the gospel, the awakening and re- 
viving of the church of God, the ele- 
vation of Christian life and holiness, 
the suppression of evil in all its myr- 
iad and gigantic forms around us, 
the evangelization of the world and 
the hastening of our Master's King- 
dom and Coming. Surely we should 
not be ever occupied in holding our 
own salvation. Indeed we shall hold 
it best by leaving it with God and 
pressing on to claim the salvation of 
others. 

In the last great European war the 
aggressors were the victors. If Qev^ 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'' 251 

many had waited to be attacked and 
simply defended herself^ probably 
she might have failed. But with 
wise and prompt aggression she 
hurled her hosts across the Ehine 
and into the battle fields of France 
and marched from victory to victory, 
her recompense being not only the 
conquest of her enemy's country, but 
the security of her own as well and 
her citizens, from^even the touch of 
the enemy. 

This is the best way to keep the 
devil iff our territory ; keep him 
busy on his own, defending his king- 
dom from our bold attacks. Beloved, 
have we settled the question of our 
own salvation and Christian life, and 
§re we at leisure for the battles of 



! 

252 ^^MOREtTHAN CONQUERORS" 

the Lord and thus ^^more than con- 
querors through Him that loved us ? " 
VI. ^^More than conquerors'' 
means not only to win yoyr battle 
and save your territory, but to do 
honor to your Captain and your God, 
to be a credit to your cause and so to 
acquit yourself in the campaign that 
God shall be glorified. Many of our 
battles are fought in view of heaven 
alone. That is a strange picture that 
the apostle gives of his trials, ^^We 
are made a gazing-stock to angels 
and principalities.'' Have you not 
felt, beloved, in some quiet hour, in 
the secret of your closet, that you 
were going through a decisive battle 
which no mortal saw. Within the 
silent walls of your chamber an issue 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 253 

was being decided which would af- 
fect all eternity. The question was, 
should you be true to God, should 
you trust Him, should you obey 
God, or should you compromise ? It 
was a great thing for you that you 
gained the victory, but it was a 
greater thing for your Lord. Oh 
how intently He watches these spec- 
tacles ! How the ranks of hell and 
heaven look on as some David and 
Goliath fight alone amidst the gaze 
of other worlds ! How your Sav- 
iour's brow flushes with shame if you 
betray Him, or even shrink ! How 
the ranks of hell shout with satisfac- 
tion when you betray the slightest 
weakness. And how your Master 
smiles with glad approval and sees of 



254 ^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'' 

the travail of His soul with satisfac- 
tion^ as like some ancient hero you 
dare to answer^ '^Our God is able to 
deliver us, but if not we will not bow 
down to the graven image which 
thou hast set up." 

Do you know, beloved, that Christ's 
greatest victories were alone with 
God and the devil ? No human eye 
saw that victory in the wilderness3 
but God saw it and was glorified. 
Shall we stand for Him, and so stand 
that He can count us, as He did His 
ancient prophet, His very towers and 
fortresses behind which He can in- 
trench Himself and His cause, and 
say to us, ^^I have made thee this 
day a defenced city and an iron pil- 
lar and brazen w^alls against the 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'' 255 

whole land. They shall fight against 
thee but they shall not prevail against 
thee. I have made thy face strong 
against their faces and thy forehead 
against their foreheads. As an ada- 
mant, harder than flint have I made 
thy forehead ; fear them not^ neither 
be dismayed at their looks though 
they be a rebellious house.'' God 
wants men and women to-day, on 
whom He can depend, to stand as 
bulwarks and battlements against 
the shocks of hell's artillery. Men 
and women of whom He can say 
^^upon this rock have I built my 
church and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it." Shall we, be- 
loved, be not only conquerors, but 
trusted Boldiers whom God can usq 



256 '^MORE THAN CONQUERORS" 

as His battle-axes and His weapons 
of war, as His mighty iron-clads, to 
carry the battle to the very ships 
of the enemy, not fearing their hard- 
est blows, and hurling against them 
the thunder-bolts of His victorious 
power. 

Vn. '^More than conquerors" 
means not only victory but final tri- 
umph and eternal reward. How 
Heaven will recompense her victors 
some glorious day ! Two cities to- 
day are struggling for the tomb of 
the man who was honored in this 
land as the leader of the victorious 
army that won the battle of the Ee- 
bellion. He is honored simply be- 
cause he was a conqueror. How lit- 
tle these earthly victories will seem 



^'more than conquerors'^ 257 

some day in the light of the triumph 
of a Stephen, a Paul, a David Liv- 
ingstone, or some gentle \vt)man or 
lowly man, who stood faithful to God 
on some quiet battlefield which de- 
cided the issues of life, perhaps the 
future of nations and ages. 

For four things Paul expected a 
crown, but the first of them was be- 
cause he had fought the good fight 
of faith. Among the special recom- 
penses of the Day of His Appearing 
there is a crown, not only for the 
martyr, not only for the faithful 
minister, not only for those who love 
His appearing, but for ^^the man that 
endareth temptation." ^^ Blessed is 
the man that endureth temptation 
for when he is tried he shall receive 



258 ^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS '' 

the crown of life which the Lord 
hath promised to them that love 
Him." There is a chance for all of 
you. There is a chance for you who 
think that you have the hardest time 
of any human being. 

Beloved, it is but an opportunity 
for coronation. Will you not only 
triumph, but so triumph that you 
shall wear a crown of life in which 
these tears which you shed to-day 
shall flash as crystal diamonds, and 
these scars of battle shall be trans- 
f cammed into marks of eternal beauty 
and everlasting honor ? 

But mere enthusiasm or even high 
and glorious purpose will not accom- 
plish this great result. It is ' ^through 
Him that loved us"that we must over- 



^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS'^ 259 

come. Thank God that is possible 
for us all ! He whom Joshua saw as 
Captain of the Lord's Host and whom 
Joshua took as his Great Command- 
er in- chief waits to lead your battle 
and claim your victory too. ^"^^I have 
overcome for thee/' He stands ex- 
claiming by thy side. Commit thy 
conflict to His hands, take Him into 
thy heart as strength, '^be strong in 
the Lord and the power of His 
might," and ^^put on the whole ar- 
mor of God that ye may stand 
against the wiles of the devil." 
^^The battle is not yours but God's." 
^^The Lord shall fight for you and 
ye shall hold your peace," and when 
all is accomplished and the banner 
waves in triumph and the crown is 



260 ^^MORE THAN CONQUERORS ^^ 

bestowed, we shall drape our battle- 
flags around His throne, and lay our 
diadems at His feet, and cry, not the 
old version, ^^ Thanks be unto God 
which always causeth us to tri- 
umph," but ^Hhanks be unto God 
which leadeth us in triumph through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. " ' 'In all these 
things we are more than conquerors 
through Him that loved us.'' 



~^^ 



GRACE ABOUNDING. 



"Where sin abounded grace did much 
more abound." Rom. v : 20. 

^WjKgjE find in nature a beautiful ap- 
^^ proximation to the truth declared 
in this verse^ a sort of parable and 
symbol of the glory of rpdemption. 
It is this. Go into the woods and cut 
a wound in the side of a living tree and 
then go back again a few years later 
and see how the tree has endeavored 
to heal its wound and restore the 
breach by a very beautiful reproduc- 
tive force. The notch in the trunk 
is all grown up again. Not, however, 
with the old fibres, but with far 



262 GRACE ABOUNDING 

stronger materials; and you will find 
the grain of the wood interlaced and 
twisted across the old fibres in a sort 
of tangle, which all your efforts 
would frequently be found unable to 
cleave asunder. In fact, the healed 
breach is much stronger than any 
other part of the tree, and nature has 
not only made good the loss, but far 
more abundantly brought good out 
of it. 

So, it is said ,a broken bone heals 
much more strongly than the natu- 
ral bone, as though nature were de- 
termined to fortify herself against a 
second attack, and to turn to account, 
in double strength, the assault made 
upon her. 

Very beautifully is this illustrated 



GRACE ABOUNDING 263 

in the formation of the pearl. A ht- 
tle grain of sand or a piercing thorn 
in the sensitive side of the pearl 
oyster, irritating its nerves, provokes 
him, not to retahate and thus inflict 
upon himself a greater wound, but 
to throw around the intruding ele- 
ment a crystalline liquid and to bury 
it out of sight in a smooth and beau- 
tiful gem ; so that out of the thorn 
and the wound come beauty and vic- 
tory, and the value of the little mol- 
lusk is enhanced a thousand-fold by 
the very incident that threatened his 
destruction. 

This is what the apostle means in 
a sublimer measure when he sums 
up his splendid antithesis between 
sin and salvation, Adam and Christ, 



264 GRACE ABOUNBING 

the fall and the redemption, with 
the magnificent declaration, '^ where 
sin abounded grace did much more 
abound." Out of the terrible attack 
which the powers of darkness hurled 
against the world, the wisdom and 
grace of heaven have brought the 
victory which is to prove the tri- 
umph of the ages. Out of the catas- 
trophe which threatened man's eter- 
nal destruction, God has evolved a 
new creation transcendently greater 
and more glorious than the old. Out 
of the ocean depths of sin, Christ has 
brought the Pearl of Great Price, the 
church, which shall shine amid the 
glories of eternity with a lustre re- 
flecting His own. Let us endeavor 
by the help of God to realize a little 



GRACE ABOUNDING 265 

more fully this elevating and trans- 
porting truth. 

1. It is illustrated in the salvation 
of the most abandoned sinners and 
the grace which is often so magnified 
in their conversion and subsequent 
usefulness. God seems to love to 
take the worst materials for His 
greatest triumphs. He chose a 
Jacob and a David in the Old Testa- 
ment, both weak and wicked men in 
many a terrible sense and measure, 
to become the respective heads of the 
patriarchal and the kingly periods. 
He saved a Manasseh after half a 
century of bloody crimes. He took 
a Eahab from the slums of Jericho, 
to be a mother in the line of the Mes- 
siah's ancestry. And when He 



266 GRACE ABOUNDING 

would choose His most illustrious 
apostle to found the glorious work of 
the gospel among the infamous Gen- 
tile races, He took ^4he chief of sin- 
ners." There is no doubt that Paul's 
calm estimate of his own wickedness, 
given by the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit, was not exaggerated. Moral 
though he was, yet even his own 
testimony leaves sufficient evidence 
of the atrocity of his religious crimes. 
Not satisfied with insulting the name 
of Jesus and abetting the murderers 
of Stephen His faithful martyr, he 
devoted himself to exterminating the 
f ollovf ers of Christ ; and with a fiend- 
ish excess of cruelty he feared not to 
destroy their souls as well as their 
bodies by committing the most fear- 



GRACE ABOUNDING 267 

ful crimes and compelling them to 
blaspheme the Name of Him on 
whom they believed. He must have 
known full well the awfulness of the 
crimes he required of them, and that 
although they might even be mis- 
taken in their faith, yet to sin 
against their conscience by profaning 
the name of Christ was, to them, 
the height of impiety, and on his 
part the very extreme of refined and 
Satanic cruelty. 

And yet he, " the chief of sinners," 
tells us that he obtained mercy for 
this very purpose, that he might be- 
come the pattern of the principle on 
which God was to act in the econo- 
my of grace, namely, to ^^show forth 
all long-suffering unto them that 



268 GRACE ABOUNDING 

should hereafter beheve on the name 
of Jesus Christ to life everlasting." 
And this does not merely mean that 
God will save the most guilty^ but 
that He will take peculiar pleasure 
in making more of their redeemed 
lives just because of their former 
wickedness. And so Paul can say 
^Hhe grace of God was exceeding 
abundant towards me, with faith 
and love which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord. " ' ' Where sin abounded grace 
did much more abound/' not only in 
forgiving the sin but in making the 
sinner a vessel of the riches of divine 
grace and love, and an instrument in 
the hands of God for greater useful- 
ness than ever was permitted per- 
haps to a mortal. 



GRACE ABOUNDING 269 

So still, through all these suc- 
ceeding centuries has He loved to 
take the thorn and the thistle and 
turn them into the fir tree, and the 
myrtle and make it unto himself 
^^for an everlasting sign that shall 
not be cut off." And, therefore, a 
wicked Bunyan, a degraded New- 
ton, a contemptible, thieving Moor- 
house^ a polluted and criminal Mc- 
Auley, yes, and many a woman 
whose name is written upon His 
hands, if not on the tablets of Chris- 
tian fame, has been, in like manner 
made an especial monument of this 
cardinal principle of divine redemp- 
tion, ^^ where sin abounded grace did 
much more abound." 

Oh, is there a soul reading these 



270 GRACE ABOUNDING 

lines that conscience and the tempter 
have conspired to discourage on ac- 
count of aggravated sin ? It matters 
not how great the sin, how strange 
the aggravations, and how long the 
story of impenitence and even of 
unbelief. To you is this message 
spoken and you may echo back to 
the throne of grace the deep petition 
which inspiration long ago breathed 
from the lips of Davids ''For thine 
own sake, Lord, pardon mine in- 
iquity, for it is great." 

But we, the people of God, must 
also fully realize this principle if we 
would stand prepared to fulfill the 
purpose of our Master. In this age 
the messengers have passed out with 
the last invitations to the gospel 



GRACE ABOUNDING 2Yl 

feast. No longer are they to be 
chiefly addressed to the first invited 
guests, but it is from the highways 
and from the hedges and from the 
streets and lanes of the city that they 
are coming in to-day in great multi- 
tudes, and not only coming, but be- 
coming the brightest trophies of re 
deeming grace and the most useful 
and honored instruments in th^ sal- 
vation of others. Shall we, beloved, 
fully realize the significance of this 
truth that the more lost, degraded 
and hopeless the soul may be to 
v^hich we bring this precious gospel, 
the more w^illing is our Master- to 
welcome it and the more glorious 
may be the issues of the redeemed life. 
As our faith in man decreases, thank 



272 GRACE ABOUNDING 

God our faith in God rises to sublimer 
heights, that ^^ where sin abounded 
grace shall much more abound." 

II. This text is illustrated in the 
sanctification of believers and espe- 
cially in their sanctification from 
qualities and tendencies naturally 
the most unholy and contrary to 
their new and sanctified lives. Still 
it is literally true in the deeper life 
of the soul that ^^ where sin abound- 
ed grace much more abounds." It 
is not that God will make the good 
better, but that He will make the 
bad good, and the utterly and hope- 
lessly bad divinely pure and holy. 
Sanctification is not the refining and 
elevating of the naturally pure, but 
the transforming of darkness into 



GRACE ABOUNDING 273 

light, a selfish soul into a living sac- 
rifice of love^ and a heart all steeped 
in corruption into the glorious coun- 
terpart of Christ's own holiness. In 
the work of grace God takes peculiar 
delight in contradicting natural prob- 
abilities and tendencies. He took a 
shrinking Jeremiah to be a bold and 
courageous reprover of Israel's proph- 
ets, priests and kings. He took a 
cowardly Peter to be the courageous 
and defiant apostle of Pentecost. He 
took a Son of Thunder to be the gen- 
tle, loving disciple of love. He took 
a raging persecutor to be the long- 
suffering apostle who could ^say, ''I 
beseech you by the meekness and 
gentleness of Christ." He can m^.ke 
the weakest things in you the strong- 



214: GRACE ABOUNDlNa 

est^ the worst things in you the occa- 
sions for the grace which will mag- 
nify in you the best and divinest 
quahties of the Christian Uf e. 

Beloved, shall we therefore cease 
to think and speak of the Christian 
life as a mere matter of education 
and fully realize that it is all a new 
creation and a miracle of infinite and 
omnipotent grace. All that God re- 
quires in each of us is an opportun- 
ity to show what He can do, and to 
prove over and over again that 
^' where sin abounded grace shall 
much more abound." 

III. The text is illustrated in the 
fact that divine grace not only saves 
and sanctifies but counteracts the 
consequences of his sins and more 



GRACE ABOUNDlNa 275 

than triumphs over the sad and 
hurtful effects of the sin. Many a 
poor fellow thinks, and many a 
sermon we fear has helped him to 
think, that though he has been for- 
given and saved yet he need never 
expect to be delivered from the 
fruits of his Hfe in harvests of sor- 
row and shame. He must not ex- 
l>eci the consequences to be obviated 
but cheerfully endure them in pa- 
tience and humility, thanking God 
that he has been saved from so 
much, and counting this but a 
reasonable reminder of the past and 
a very small retribution compared 
with what he deserved. He quotes, 
or others quote to him, a passage in 
Galatians vi : 7. ^^ Whatsoever a 



L7G GRACE ABOUNDING 

man soweth that shall he also reap/^ 
and so they expect to reap in their 
bodies the physical infirmities and 
diseases which are the legitimate 
fruit of a life of dissipation and sin. 
They expect that their social and 
secular life may be embarrassed and 
impeded by the issues of their past, 
and that only after a long and pa- 
tient endurance can they expect to 
recover themselves from the entan- 
glement of the sins of their youth 
which encompassed them about. 

Now we believe that grace is able 
to do something better than this, 
and that our blessed Lord has borne 
the bitter fruit of sin as our 
Substitute, and that His atonement 
has power to cancel all the effects 



GRACi2 ABOUNDING 277 

of sin and even turn the curse into 
a blessing. The great Augustine^ 
one of the fathers of the Christian 
Churchy found himself at his con- 
version a physical wreck in his 
early youth. Every drop of his 
blood was poisoned by the virus of 
sin^ and his frame was literally drop- 
ping into corruption through every 
abominable excess. But the grace 
of God not only saved his soul, but 
restored his body and gave him 
nearly half a century of almost un- 
paralleled usefulness in physical 
health and strength and glorious 
service for his Master and the 
church. 

Many a redeemed drunkard to-day 
can tell the same story of physical 



St8 GRACE ABOUNDING} 

forces perfectly restored and every 
trace of a degraded life removed, 
not only from the physical energies 
but even from the very counten- 
ance. And so the grace of Christ 
can take the social life and coun- 
teract the innumerable currents of 
evil that have gone forth from us 
to return in our own life in entan- 
glements and embarrassments and 
to work their lasting influences in 
the lives of others. In proportion 
to our faith, God can undo these 
influences and give us back all 
that we have lost and more. ^^I 
will restore to you/' He says, ^^the 
years that the locust hath eaten, 
the cankerworm and the caterpillar, 
my great army which I sent among 



GRACE ABOUNDING 2^9 

you." Sometimes the very life that 
the sinner has Hved in the service of 
Satan is made an opportunity for 
greater usefulness, as he is enabled to 
J each classes to which the moral and 
respectable cannot even have access. 
And so God is constantly taking 
men out of the dives and slums, out 
of the saloons and dance-halls, out 
of the great lost world, that He may 
send them back again to their own 
former sphere as messengers of re- 
deeming love. Fear not, then, poor 
trembling disciple, that you shall 
be drawn into the vortex that your 
own past life has created. Eeckon 
yourself dead indeed unto it in all 
its issues, and go forth claiming the 
full redemption of your risen Lord 



280 GRACE ABOUNDING 

and walking with Him as though 
you were not even the same person 
who once hved the Hfe of sin and 
misery. 

IV. The text is illustrated most 
sublimely of all in the work of re- 
demption. In a word its deep sig- 
nificance is simply this, that the 
work of Christ's redemption has 
more than counteracted and will 
ultimately transcend all the effects 
of the Fall. We believe that it has 
brought more glory to God than if 
the human race had kept their first 
estate. It has led to a new revela- 
tion of the divine character, which, 
but for sin might never have been 
known. Creation revealed God in 
His power, wisdom and purity, but 



GRACE ABOUNDING 281 

only redemption has revealed Him 
in His attitude of grace, that is, 
divine goodness dealing with the 
sinful and the lost. Had man never 
fallen, God would certainly have been 
known as a holy Being, through the 
terrible retribution which He visited 
upon the angels which kept not 
their first estate; but the wreck of 
the humun race has exhibited Him 
in the most beautiful and attractive 
of all attitutes, as the God of mercy 
and love to the unworthy and wicked. 
Heaven would often have heard the 
song, ''Alleluia! for the Lord God 
Omnipotent reigneth," even if Christ 
never had died, but only redemption 
has given the key-note of the new 
song, ''Worthy is the Lamb that 
was slain ! " 



282 GRACE ABOUNDING 

But it is not only an exhibition of 
His love and grace, but of that 
transcendent wisdom that could still 
vindicate His righteousness and 
guard the sanctity of His holy will, 
and yet devise a way by which 
mercy could have free exercise and 
God could be just and yet a Saviour. 
The cross of Jesus Christ becomes a 
monument of God's infinite wisdom, 
righteousness and love, and through 
all the ages to come will exhibit ^^the 
exceeding riches of His grace in His 
kindness towards us by Jesus Christ. " 
Take out of the coming eternity the 
song of redemption, the millennial 
kingdom, the glory of Jesus and the 
prospects of His redeemed people, 
and heaven will seem annihilated 



GRACE ABOUNDING 283 

and the universe a dreary waste, 
while even God Himself shall be- 
come enveloped in clouds of thickest, 
darkest and remotest distance, and 
the Bible will be obliterated from 
existence. 

The benefits that come to men are 
still more manifest and deeply inter- 
esting. The redemption of our fallen 
race brings us to a far higher 
place than the first creation ever 
gave us. Unfallen man was only a 
creature made in the image of God, 
but a little lower than the angels. 
Eedeemed man has been raised above 
the rank of angels to partake of the 
very nature of God, to be a joint- 
heir with the Son of God and to 
share eternally the throne of his 



284 GRACE ABOUNDING 

Creator and the attributes of the 
eternal Son, our glorious Head. 
Eedemption is therefore not the re- 
storation of Adamic holiness, hap- 
piness or honor, but it is the uniting 
of man with the Son of God and the 
exalting of the redeemed sinner to 
kindred fellowship with a higher 
Being, so that, eternally like his 
Lord, the redeemed man shall be, 
not only a man, but a man united 
with God and possessing in the depths 
of his being the very spirit and na- 
ture of the eternal Jehovah. 

This is so sublime that we would 
fear to boldly state it had we not the 
unmistakable language of the Holy 
Scriptures. '^Behold what manner 
of love the Father hath bestowiid 



GRACE ABOUNDING 285 

upon US that we should be called the 
sons of God." ''Beloved, now are 
we the sons of God, and it doth not 
yet appear what we shall be, but we 
know that wben He shall appear we 
shall be hke Him for we shall see 
Him as He is." ''Whereby are given 
unto us exceeding great and precious 
promises that by these ye might be 
partakers of the divine nature." 
'^ Your life is hid with Christ in God, 
but when Christ, who is your life 
shall appear then shall we also ap- 
pear with Him in glory. " Yes, the 
day is coming when Satan shall gaze 
upon the consummated work of the 
Great Restorer and see everything 
his hand has touched transformed 
into a monument of the grace and 



286 GRACE ABOUNDING 

power of the Redeemer, and even he 
shall bow the knee and bitterly con- 
fess like one of his ancient disciples, 
^^Oh, Nazarene ! Thou hast con- 
quered." 

We may not be able to understand 
all sides of this great problem. Of 
course it would not be right to say 
that God intended or desired the sin 
and fall of His creatures and the sad 
train of still greater sin and misery 
that has followed. But we can sure- 
ly believe that while He discoun- 
tenanced the disobedience of Adam, 
as He does all disobedience, while 
He desires His children to walk in 
His will in holy obedience, and while 
He still is deeply grieved with every 
transgression and something is lost 



GRACE ABOUNDING 287 

by it inevitably, yet the resources of 
His grace and power are such that, 
being committed. He has ample ex- 
pedients to counteract its effects; 
and while all the consequences are 
not averted, yet enough good is 
brought out of it to result, in the 
end, in a higher aggregate of bless- 
ing, to turn the evil to the best 
possible account, and to show that 
God's all-sufficiency is more than a 
match for every emergency that can 
ever arise. 

For ourselves, surely, the practical 
lessons are not hard to find. If 
there be a discouraged life within 
reach of this message, if there is a 
heart that has been held back by 
the iron fetters of the past and 



288 GRACE ABOUNDING 

to whom Satan has been whisper- 
ing, ^' There is no hope, but we 
will go on in the imagination of our 
hearts/' oh, beloved, surely we have 
seen enough in this passage to an- 
swer the unworthy thought and 
ignoble fear, and to encourage us just 
because of the extremity of our sit- 
uation, to claim more boldly, the 
interposition of our Almighty Friend 
and the over-ruling power of His 
grace and love. The very hardest 
case is the one which He most loves 
to take. The most hopeless situa- 
tion is the one through whose relief 
He is most glorified. If everything 
in your life seems against you, and 
if, worst of all, you feel that you 
alorie ai'e to blame for everything 



GRACE ABOUNDING 289 

that is against you ; if it has been, 
not only sorrow but sin, and every 
aggravation of sin — beloved, the 
grace of Jesus Christ was prepared 
for you and such as you. Only 
prove its all-sufficiency and you 
shall be among all that we have 
already specified, the crowning il 
lustration of this most blessed truth, 
that ^^ where sin abounded grace 
did much more abound. '^ 

God's great ultimate purpose for 
His redeemed people is the key to 
all the ^^ exceeding great and pre- 
cious promises." This, and this 
alone, explains the strong language 
in which He speaks to us of the 
provisions of His grace for our 
needs. These promises are out of 



290 Grace abounding 

all proportion to our importance or 
worthy and it is not strange that 
naturally we should hesitate to ac- 
cept such boundless and stupendous 
assurances of love and care, and 
that our faith should be as narrow 
and paltry as it often is. It is not 
strange that the beggar child should 
be content with rags and crumbs, 
and almost think it is mocked when 
you talk to it about palaces and 
offer it the costly robes and the 
princely treasures of royalty. The 
truth is, we are the children nat- 
urally of low and shameful birth 
and spiritual destitution, but we 
have been adopted into a higher 
rank, nay, we have been born into a 
heavenly life and a divine sonship^ 



Grace abounding 291 

and we are destined^ as the very chil- 
dren of God^ to share the exceeding 
riches of His glory through all the 
ages to come ; and^ therefore, we are 
recognized by Him now and treated 
in the manner befitting our future 
glory. We are like the children of 
wealthy parents who are at school in 
a foreign land, not having yet come 
into their inheritance, but being sup- 
plied by their father, even in their 
minority, with boundless wealth for 
every need. And so, although we 
have not entered upon our eternal 
inheritance, yet God has given us a 
cheque book on the bank of heaven, 
and on the back of every cheque He 
has Himself endorsed the vast and 
illimitable guarantee, ^^My God shall 



292 GRACE ABOUNDING 

supply all your need according to His 
riches in glory by Jesus Christ." 

And so this word '^abound" has 
come to be a sort of a key-note to the 
New Testament promises. Even of 
His promises He says, ' ' God willing 

MORE ABUNDANTLY to shcw unto the 

heirs of promise the immutability of 
His counsel confirmed it by an oath " 
(Heb. Yi : 17). His word is abundant, 
His promises boundless, His loving, 
faithful heart struggles to express in 
ever ampler language and larger ut- 
terance, the immeasurable and un- 
speakable fulness of His love, so that 
His great promises are like mount- 
ains piled upon mountains until His 
faithfulness truly reacheth imto the 
clouds. 



GRACE ABOUNDING 293 

So again, His mercy and grace to 
the sinful are as abundant. ^^The 
grace of our Lord/' says the Apostle, 

^^WaS EXCEEDING ABUNDANT with 

faith and love which is in Christ 
Jesus." And again in Eom. v: 17, he 
speaks of those who ^^ receive abund- 
ance OF GRACE and the gi^t of right- 
eousness who shall reign in life by 
one Jesus Christ." The life that 
Jesus brings to us is not only life but 
^4ife MORE abundantly" (Jno. x: 
10). Redemption and forgiveness 
are declared in Eph. i : 7, 8, to be 
'^according to the riches of His grace 
wherein He hath abounded toward 
us in all wisdom and prudence," that 
is, in all the variety of the love and 
care that adapts and adjusts His 



294: GRACE ABOUNDING 

mercy and His grace to every 
shade of guilt and need, and which 
anticipates every future emergency ; 
for this is the meaning of ^^ pru- 
dence/' Hterally, foresight and provi- 
dence. 

His purpose in our salvation is 
that " in the ages to come He might 

show the EXCEEDING RICHES OF HiS 

GRACE in His kindness toward us by 
Christ Jesus" (Eph. ii : T). All the 
dispensations of His providence are 
destined to give occasion for still 
larger manifestations of His grace, 
' ' For all things are for your sakes 
that the abundant grace might 
through the thanksgiving of many 
redound to the glory of God '' (2 
Cor. iv : 15). Even in our deepest 



GRACE ABOUNDING 295 

sorrows He has made provision for 
such overflowing abundance of com- 
fort and joy that the sorrow shall be 
lost in the joy, for, '^As the suffer- 
ings of Christ abound in ' us, so our 

CONSOLATION ALSO ABOUNDETH by 

Christ '' (2 Cor. i : 5). The provi- 
sions of grace for our Christian life 
and work are equally boundless, for 
^'God is able to make all grace 
ABOUND toward you : that ye always 
having a.11 sufficiency in all things, 
MAY ABOUND to every good work" 
(2 Cor. ix : 8). And like a mount- 
ain-top, high above all the rest and 
lost in the clouds, it is all summed 
up in the sublime hyperbole, ^^Now 
unto Him that is able to do exceed- 
ing ABUNDANTX.Y abovo all that w^e 



296 GRACE ABOUNDING 

ask or think, according to the power 
that worketh in us, unto Him be 
glory in the church by Christ 
Jesus, throughout all ages, world 
without end. Amen " (Eph. iii : 20, 
21). 

This is the divine measure of re- 
deeming grace, and so on our side 
we are called upon to meet God's 
high measure with corresponding 
fulness. We are to abound in 
faith. ^'Eooted and built up in 
Him, and stabhshed in the faith, as 
ye have been taught, abounding 
therein with thanksgiving" (Col. ii : 
7). We are to abound in love. 
^'And this I pray, that your love 
MAY ABOUND yet more and more in 
knowledge and in all judgment" 



GRACE ABOUNDING 297 

(Phil, i: 9). ''And the Lord make 
you to increase and abound in love 
one toward another, and toward all 
men, even as we do toward you " (1 
Thess. iii : 12). We are. to abound 
in holiness. " Furthermore then we 
beseech you, brethren^ and exhort 
you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye 
have received of us how ye ought to 
walk and to please God, so ye would 

ABOUND MORE AND MORE " (1 TheSS. 

iv : 1). We are to abound in joy. 
''That your rejoicing maybe more 
ABUNDANT in Christ Jesus " (Phil, i : 
29), and in hope, "Now the God of 
hope fill you with all joy and peace 
in believing, that ye may abound in 
HOPE, through the power of the Holy 
Ghost " (Eom. xv : 13). We are to 



298 GRACE ABOUNDING 

abound in liberality, even in the depths 
of poverty. ^^The abundance of 
their joy and their deep poverty 
ABOUNDED uuto the riches of their 
liberality. " ' 'Therefore as ye abound 
in everything, in faith and utter- 
ance, and knowledge, and in all dili- 
gence, and in your love to us, see 
that ye abound in this grace also " 
(2 Cor. viii : 2, 7). 

And our spiritual experience is to 
be not a strained but an ample one, 
ever growing in breadth, depth, 
height and symmetry, through the 
abundant grace of the divine nature 
in our heart. ''And besides this, 
giving all diligence, add to your 
faith virtue ; and to virtue, knowl- 
edge ; and to knowledge, temper- 



GRACE ABOUNDING 299 

ance ; and to temperance, patience ; 
and to patience, godliness ; and to 
godliness, brotherly kindness ; and 
to brotherly kindness, charity. For 
if these things be in you, and 
ABOUND, they make you that ye 
shall neither be barren nor unfruit- 
ful in the knowledge of our Lord 
Jesus Christ " (2 Pet. i : 5-8). And 
finally if we thus enter into His 
abundant grace we shall have His 
glorious recompense in like propor- 
tion^ and ^^So an entrance shall be 
ministered unto you abundantly in- 
to the everlasting kingdom of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." 

Beloved, shall we so receive '^His 
fullness, even grace for grace," and 
so enter in at last, not like a battered 



300 GRACE ABOUNDING 

ship, with masts and sails all gone 
and banner torn to shreds, and slowly 
drawn by some old tug boat across 
the bar into the harbor or the dry- 
dock ; but shall we rather, with flags 
all flying, and sails swelling in the 
gales of heaven, and myriads on the 
shore waiting to welcome us, shall 
we have an entrance ministered unto 
us abundantly into the everlasting 
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, while wondering an- 
gels, looking back to the past and 
gazing in amazement on our present 
glory, shall turn to each other and 
say, ^^ where sin abounded grace did 
much more abound.'' 



FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH. 



''From strength to strength."— Psalm 
Ixxxiv : 7. 

f^His is a chapter of the '^Pilgrim's 
_ Progress " through the valley of 
Baca^ of which this beautiful psalm 
is a picture. It is the story of the 
life of trust, and its two key-notes 
are tha fifth and twelfth verses of 
the psalm, " Lord of hosts, blessed 
is the man that trusteth in thee." 
^' Blessed is the man whose strength 
is in thee." To him the valley of 
Baca, the valley of weeping, at once 
becomes a well of living waters, and 
every low and dry place a pool for 



302 FROM STRENGTH 

the heavenly rain to fill with floods 
of deeper blessing ; and drinking 
from the living waters the pilgrims 
go ^^from strength to strength," and 
all at last go home, for '' every one 
of them in Zion appeareth before 
God." 

" From strength to strength !" But 
there is a previous chapter, from 
weakness to strength. For man is 
naturally the weakest creature in 
the universe. He comes into life 
with the wail of a helpless infant, 
weaker than the tiger's cub or the 
birdling in its nest. But his physical 
frailty is but a figure of his spirit- 
ual helplessness. ^'When we were 
yet without strength in due time 
Christ died for the ungodly." But 



TO STRENGTH 303 

the grace of God in the conversion 
of the soul brings its first spiritual 
strength, enabling it to choose and 
trust the Lord, to turn from sin and 
walk in holy obedience. Then it 
sings the new song, '^0 Lord, I will 
praise thee ; though thou wast angry 
with me thine anger is turned away 
and thou comfortest me. Behold, 
God is my salvation; I will trust and 
be not afraid, for the Lord Jehovah 
is my strength and my song ; He 
also is become my salvation." 

Very strong is the new-born trust 
and love of the converted soul ; very 
strong its purpose, its joy and its 
holy enthusiasm. It truly seems as 
if it never could be tempted to doubt 
or disobey, and, like Peter, it is 



304 FROM STRENGTH 

ready to cry, ''Though all men 
should deny thee^ yet will I never 
deny thee." And God meets us on 
this plane and helps our strength, 
although He has something far bet- 
ter for us further on. Speaking to 
such a heart in the forty-first of 
Isaiah and the ninth verse, He says, 
''Thou art my servant; I have 
chosen thee, and not cast thee away." 
It is the experience of the soul that 
has just come to God. And then He 
adds, " Fear thou not^ for I am with 
thee ; be not dismayed, for I am thy 
God ; I will strengthen thee; yea, I 
will help thee ; yea, I will uphold 
thee with the right hand of my 
righteousness." 
These last three clauses describe 



To STRENGTH 305 

three very distinct experiences of our 
early Christian life. The first comes 
when we begin to feel our strength 
insufficient and cry to God for in- 
creased strength^ and He strengthens 
us. It is the old kind of strength, 
but He gives us more of it. But 
soon even this is not sufficient, and, 
as we still sink, He comes and adds 
His help to our strength. ^'I will 
help thee," He says. It is now the 
strengthened heart with the strong 
Lord helping. But still you will 
notice that we are in front and not 
the Lord. It is our battle, and He is 
simply re-inforcing us with His 
auxiliaries. But now a greater crisis 
comes. Even this is not sufficient, 
and we sink in the conflict and are 



306 FROM STRENGTH 

ready to fall in utter exhaustion and 
discouragement, whenlo! our Mighty 
Helper comes upon the field Himself, 
takes the battle in His own almighty 
hands, lifts up our sinking form as a 
mother would a babe, bids us no 
longer to stand even in His help, but 
takes us bodily in His arms and car- 
ries us with His own almighty 
strength as He cries, ^^Yea, I will 
uphold thee with the right hand of 
my righteousness." Oh, that is 
from strength to strength ! From 
our own strength to His increased 
strength, and now from even this to 
the absolute all-sufficiency of God 
Himself. 

Now we notice in the vivid imag- 
ery of the prophet a sudden and 



TO STRENGTH 307 

complete change upon the battle- 
field, and looking round, we find that 
all our foes have already fled before 
His face. Our almighty Captain has 
taken the field, and ^^lo! all they 
that were incensed against Ihee 
shall be ashamed and confounded, 
and they that strive with thee shall 
perish. Thou shalt seek them and 
not find them, even them that con- 
tended with thee ; they that war 
against thee shall be as nothing, and 
as a thing of nought." A- - - 

In the third chapter of Eevelation 
we see the little church of Philadel- 
phia going through something like 
this experience. " Thou hast a little 
strength," the Master says, ' ^and hast 
kept my word and not denied my 



308 FROM STRENGTH 

name." But in the tenth verse we 
find a mightier strength coming to 
the faithful in Philadelphia. '^Be- 
cause thou hast kept the word of my 
patience I also will keep thee." It 
is God's keeping now^ not our own; 
and in the twelfth verse it reached 
its chmax. The one who had "a. 
little strength " has now become ^^a 
pillar/' with strength enough not 
only to uphold its own weight, but 
to support the edifice under which it 
stands. But when Philadelphia be- 
comes a pillar its own individuality 
passes away, and it becomes identi- 
fied with God Himself, for He says, 
''I will write upon him the name of 
my God, and the name of the city 
of my God, which is New Jerusalem, 



TO STRENGTH 309 

which Cometh down out of Heaven 
from my God ; and I will write upon 
him my new name." This is not 
now mere human strength, but the 
strength of Jehovah. 

We have now got to the great 
theme which we desire to impress as 
the Lord enables us. 

I. It is divine, not human strength, 
and it is strength which is wholly 
divine and in no sense or measure 
human. It is an exchange of 
strength in which we have surren- 
dered all our fancied power and re- 
ceived instead the divine power and 
enabling. This glorious exchange 
of strength is vividly set forth in the 
animated language of the sublime 
Isaiah, chapter xl : ^^Hegiveth pow- 



310 FROM STRENGTH 

er to the f aint^ and to them that have 
no might He increaseth strength. 
Even the youths shall faint and be 
weary, and the young men shall ut- 
terly fall, but they that wait upon 
the Lord shall exchange their 
strength." That is to say, the 
strongest human strength, the man- 
hood of young men, the vigor and 
vitality of youth shall be wholly in- 
adequate for the exigencies of Chris- 
tian life and conflict, and it is not 
until these have failed that God has 
room to display the resources of His 
omnipotence. When we become 
^^faint," then He giveth His power, 
and when we have '^no might," then 
He ^^ increaseth strength," that is, 
gives yet more because of our utter 



TO STiRENGTH 311 

helplessness. Waiting on the Lord, 
we let our strength go and take His 
instead, and so renew or exchange 
our strength. 

A simple figure may help to illus- 
trate the thought, Look at that 
man trying to ford a river, and 
with all his might struggling with 
the deep flood, and, by dint of tre- 
mendous physical exertions, stem- 
ming its mighty waters, and panting 
and exhausted reaching the other 
shore. That is strength matched 
with the strength of the elements. 
But look at another. Wading out a 
little distance into the deep flood by 
the exercise of his own strength, he 
now lets go, and falls and sinks upon 
the bosom of the river. Lo ! it bears 



312 FROM STRENGTH 

him without a struggle and carries 
him down in its swift current. He 
has let go his strength, and he is 
now carried by the strength of the 
stream. 

So there are many of us who are 
trying to ford the stream by our own 
strong will and efforts. There is a 
sweeter way, by ceasing from our 
strength and falling into the mighty 
current of God's infinite life and 
love and being borne by a power su- 
perior to ours w^ithout a struggle. 
Many people never reach their true 
development until their difficulties 
become so great that they break 
down in the struggle and fall into 
the arms of God. This is what the 
apostle meant when he exclaimed, 



TO STRENGTH 313 

^^ I take pleasure in infirmities ; when 
I am weak then am I strong." And 
this was but an echo df the Master's 
own assurance, ^^ My grace is suffi- 
cient for thee, for my strength is 
made perfect in weakness." 

Beloved, have you exchanged your 
strength for the Lord's ? Have you 
gone ^^from strength," that is yours, 
'^to strength," that is the strength 
divine ! 

II. It is strength for a higher spir- 
itual plane. ^^They shall mount up 
with wings as eagles." It is a 
strength which enables us to mount 
to a higher element of life and com- 
munion with God. It brings us into 
the divine life and raises us up to 
dwell in heavenly places with Christ, 



314 FROM STRENGTH 

It resists and overcomes the natural 
direction of earth, to draw us down- 
ward, and, lil&e the buoyant wing of 
the fowls of the firmament, it bears 
us and holds us on high, in a calm 
and heavenly atmosphere where the 
world lies beneath our feet, and we 
are lifted above the things which 
once encompassed and entangled us. 
We are not now fighting the wild 
waves, but flying far above them in 
another element. The mightiest hu- 
man strength cannot lift us up to 
this. Only the strong pinions of the 
Heavenly Dove can bear us aloft to, 
and hold us supremely in this heav- 
enly region. This is God's true de- 
liverance from most of our troubles ; 
not to change them, but to rise above 



TO STRENGTH 315 

them. Oh, how we need these sea- 
sons of spiritual elevation and heav- 
enly inspiration to strengthen us for 
the practical sphere of common life, 
and enable us to ^^run and not be 
weary;'' and to '^walk and not 
faint." 

Yes we need these times of waiting, 

When their strength our souls renew : 
Drinking at the heavenly fountain. 

Bathing in the heavenly dew ; 
Yes, we need these heights of rapture, 

When we mount on eagles' wings. 
Then returning to earth's duties, 

All our heart exultant springs. 
Oh how every labor lightens ! 

As with swift divine constraint. 
We can "run and not be weary. 

We can walk and never faint. 

III. Strength for the practical du- 



316 FROM STRENGTH 

ties of life. For they that thus ^^ re- 
new their strength" ^^ shall run and 
not be weary ; and they shall walk 
and not faint." It is not all for 
heights of rapture or hours of vis- 
ion^ but these experiences reach 
their true fruition in the consecra- 
tion of our common life and the tri- 
umph of faith and patience in the 
routine of daily duty. This is the 
pathway where we have often to run 
the strong race of peculiar difficul- 
ty, strenuous exertion and sudden 
and severe emergency, but God's 
strength does not grow weary under 
the most extreme tests. Then there 
are the long protracted strains, the 
almost interminable delays, the end- 
less minutiae of trial, irritation and 



TO STRENGTH 317 

care, that need the sustained strength 
which holds on its way and carries 
us through all the details of life's ex- 
periences as victoriously as through 
its greater battle-fields. -These are 
the things that exhaust mere human 
strength, but the strength of God 
can ' ' walk and not faint." Beloved, 
have we thus exchanged our strength 
and are we victoriously pursuing our 
onward way with calm victorious 
spirit, unwearied and unfainting ? 

IV. It is strength to ^^ withstand 
in the evil day and having done all 
to stand." Dr. Mackay of Hull once 
said that Isaiah had left out one of 
the things which God's strength en- 
ables us to do, for it is harder to run 
than to fly, and harder to walk tharj 



318 FROM STRENGTH 

to run, but there is something harder 
than walking, and that is to stand. 
Now Paul has supplied this omission, 
if it be one, in his superb picture of 
the Christian conqueror in the sixth 
chapter of Ephesians. This chapter, 
by-the-way, is the very chapter of 
the life that has mounted up with 
wings as eagles and is dwelling on 
high. Its key-note is, ^^ Dwelling in 
heavenly places in Christ Jesus," 
and, like the picture in Isaiah, the 
apostle ends with a very practical 
conclusion. The outcome of all this 
strength is to ^^put on the whole ar- 
mor of God that ye may be able to 
stand against the wiles of the devil. 
For we wrestle not against flesh and 
blood, but against principalities. 



TO STRENGTH 319 

against powers, against the rulers of 
the darkness of this world, against 
spiritual wickedness in high places. 
Wherefore take unto you the whole 
armor of God that ye may be able 
to stand in the evil day and having 
done all to stand." This is the only 
strength w^hich will enable you to 
stand. The sooner we discover 
the better, that the strongest of us 
is no match for Satan, and that our 
highest and holiest resolutions will 
be surely broken and our souls trod- 
den down in defeat and despair be- 
neath our conqueror's scornful feet, 
unless we meet our spiritual foes in 
the very presence and power of 
Jesus. 
For this is just what all this pic- 



320 FROM STRENGTH 

ture means. The shield of faith is 
the faith of God ; the sword of the 
Spirit is the Word of God, wielded 
by the Holy Ghost within us ; the 
very prayer in which we are to over- 
come is to be prayed in the Spirit ; 
the armor is the armor of God ; the 
strength is to " be strong in the Lord 
and the power of His might." In a 
word, it is to confront the devil with 
the living God within us and so pos- 
sessing us that the battle is not ours 
but God's, and the enemy, from the 
beginning, uaderstands that he has 
challenged, not a poor unequal man, 
but his own Almighty Conqueror., 
the Son of God. This is to be ^^ more 
than conqueror through Him that 
Jpvedus;'' this is to say, ^^ Thanks 



TO STRENGTH 321 

be unto God who always leadeth us 
in triumph through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

V. It is strength to endure. Let 
us read attentively Col. i : 11. 
'^Strengthened with all might, ac- 
cording to His glorious power, unto 
all patience and longsuffering with 
joyfulness." Here is one of the ad- 
vanced stations of the pilgrim's prog- 
ress ''from strength to strength." 
We may well pause and ask if we 
have reached this place of strength. 
Is this then the goal of Pentecost ? 
Is this the great objective point con- 
templated by the mighty baptism of 
the Holy Ghost ? Is this the mean- 
ing of the power from on high ? 
"Strengthened with all might ac- 



S22 FROM STRENGTH 

cording to His glorious power ! " 
One would surely look for a sublimer 
battle-field to follow such a splendid 
parade of the armies of God. But 
lo ! we behold an entirely different 
spectacle. A solitary soldier on an 
obscure and weary pathway, battling 
with a thousand petty hardships, 
difficulties and trials, or standing 
through all the day of battle without 
a single opportunity of advancing, 
and seemingly called to nothing else 
but to stand under the fire of the en- 
emy and to ^^ endure hardness as a 
good soldier of Jesus Christ." His 
whole business seems to be ^^ patience 
and long-suffering ;" the first, with 
reference to the trials which God i^ 
pleased to send upon him ; the sec- 



TO STRENGTH 323 

ond, the annoyances and injuries of 
men. Ah ! these are the very things 
human strength cannot endure. 
Many a brave man can stand under 
a cannon's fire more cahnly than he 
can endure the taunts of a fellow- 
creature. The highest victory of the 
Son of God was, that, ^^when He 
was reviled He reviled not again ; 
when He suffered He threatened 
not:" and the mightiest triumphs of 
the strength of God in us are realized 
when we can receive the hiding of 
our Father's face and even the weight 
of His mighty hand without a doubt 
or murmur, and accept the miscon- 
ceptions, opprobriums, reproaches 
and wrongs of our fellow-men, not 
only with long-suffering, but with 



324 FROM STRENGTH 

joyfulness ; not only unruffled and 
unretaliating, but sweetly realizing 
and fully believing that they are to 
us the pledges of some richer blessing 
from our heavenly Father, and the 
guarantees of something so glori- 
ous that we cannot but thank God 
for giving us the opportunity of thus 
winning another blessing. 

Beloved, have we any room for 
progress here ^^from strength to 
strength ? " 

VI. It is strength that carries us 
in victory through the whole range 
of our Christian experience with all 
its extremes, and enables us to say, 
^^I can do all things through Christ 
which strengtheneth me. '^ The apos- 
tle had tested it in the heights and 



TO STRENGTH 325 

depths of human circumstances and 
found it equal to all vicissitudes, 
variations and exigencies. The force 
of his glorious confession lies in the 
^^ all things." Human strength can 
accomplish some things, but the 
strength of God is equally adequate 
for all. It is equal in its uniformity, 
immutability, un variableness. Over 
every opening morning it inscribes 
the promise, ^^As thy day so shall 
thy strength be." It has such an in- 
finite reserve of all- sufficiency that 
we need not question whether our 
strength is adequate to the duty. All 
we need to know is, does God require 
it ? for if He does He will abundantly 
enable us. The great ships of ocean, 
and especially the ships of to-day, 



32^ FROM STRENGTH 

are scarcely affected by the storms, 
or the elements. They are so strong 
that they move on with equal facility 
through the glassy sea or the roll- 
ing waves. The strength of God in 
a human life will carry it thus stead- 
ily through all life's changes. 

" Calm as the ray of sun or star, 
Which storms assail in vain. 

Moving unruffled through life's war, 
The eternal calm to gain." 

VII. It is strength which enables 
us to receive Christ's indwelling in 
all its fullness, and to enter into all 
the meaning of His mystical hfe. 
''For this cause I bow my knees 
unto the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christy of whom the whole family 
in heaven and earth is named, that 



TO STRENGTH 327 

He would grant you^ according to 
the riches of His glory, to be 
strengthened with might by His 
Spirit in the inner man, that Christ 
may dwell in your hearts by faith, 
that ye, being rooted and grounded 
in love, may be able to comprehend 
with all saints what is the breadth, 
and length, and depth and height ; 
and to know the love of Christ which 
passeth knowledge, that ye might 
be filled with all the fullness of God. 
Now unto Him that is able to do 
exceeding abundantly above all that 
we can ask or think, according to 
the power that worketh in us, unto 
Him be glory in the church by Christ 
Jesus throughout all ages, world 
without end. Amen." 



328 FROM STRENGTH 

The apostle is speaking here of 
the indwelling of God in the heart ; 
' ' That ye might be filled with all the 
fullness of God/' is the crowning 
statement of this great truth and 
experience. This is possible in a 
measure '^exceeding abundantly 
above " all that we are enabled to 
ask or think. It is to be realized 
through Christ dwelling in our 
hearts, and Christ's indwelling will 
bring us into an experience of love 
in which we shall know and compre- 
hend the height and depth and length 
and breadth of His love which 
passeth knowledge. But this in- 
dwelling of Christ is to come through 
simple faith. Now all this looks ex- 
tremely easy on paper and in theory^ 



TO STRENGTH 329 

but the apostle tells us that in order 
to enter into it we must be ^^strength- 
ened with might by His Spirit in the 
inner man.'' This divine filling re- 
quires a vessel that can hold it, and 
a vessel supernaturally strengthened. 
You cannot put a charge of dyna- 
mite or a hundred-pound shot into a 
pocket pistol or a vessel of clay. 
You want the mightiest ordnance, 
the strongest barrel and breech, to- 
bear the enormous strain of so much 
concentrated power. And God has 
to prepare us as the vessels of His 
power, and, m order to do so, He 
must take us out of our own strength 
into the strength of Christ. Our 
mere natural capacities cannot re- 
ceive Jesus. The loftiest intellect, 



330 FROM STRENGTH 

the strongest brain, is unequal to 
this experience ; but the humblest 
capacity, when strengthened by the 
Holy Ghost, may know God as no 
angel ever knew Him, and exult in 
His inmeasurable love, as only His 
loved ones can. 

And even after we have received 
Christ's indwelling through the Holy 
Ghost enabling us, there are depths 
and heights in ^^all the fullness of 
God" in which we more perfectly 
enter, in proportion as we allow the 
Holy Ghost to fit us for the deeper 
and higher experience. This is often 
what our severest trials are meant 
for, to give to our spirit a vigor and 
capacity which will enable us to rise 
to a higher place in thQ fellowship 



TO STRENGTH 331 

VIII. It is strength which is estab- 
hshed and perfected by spiritual 
disciphne. ^^But the God of all 
grace, who hath called us unto His 
eternal glory by Christ Jesus^ after 
that ye have suffered a while, make 
you perfect, stablish, strengthen, 
settle you " (1 Pet. v : 20). Every 
new experience of Christ's grace 
must be confirmed by some new dis- 
cipline in the school of trial, and 
even after we have come to know 
God as ^Hhe God of all grace, who 
hath called us unto His eternal 
glory," we must suffer a while, that 
even this knowledge and experience 
of His grace may be established, 
strengthened, settled. 

And so we are ever passing on 



332 FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH 

^^from strength to strength/' and 
finding, Hke the giant oak, that the 
wildest tempests, instead of tearing 
us from our foundation, only plant 
us deeper and root us the more se- 
curely to the Eock of Ages. 




GOD'S MEASURELESS MEAS- 
URES. 



*'But they measuring themselves by them- 
selves, and comparing themselves among 
themselves are not wise. But we will not 
boast of things without our measure, but 
according to the measure of the rule which 
God hath distributed to us, a measure to 
reach even unto you.'' 2 Cor. x : 12, 13. 

*' With what measure ye mete it shall be 
measured to you ; and unto you that hear 
shall more be given." Mark iv : 24. 

BjiE have here two sorts of meas- 
ures contrasted, the human and 
the divine. There is a great deal in 
a measure. Half an inch off the 
draper's yard stick makes a good 
many yards difference when the 



334: god's measureless 

goods are delivered. The division of 
a hair hne in a carpenter's rule might 
destroy all the calculations of the 
architect in the construction of a 
building. A little boy told his 
mother that he was six feet high, 
and when she doubted the statement 
he assured her that he had just 
measured himself by his own Httle 
rule. His calculations would have 
been all right if his rule had been 
rights but when examined, it was 
found to be a little less than six 
inches long. This is the sort of rule 
that a great many Christians meas- 
ure by. 

There are two sorts of human 
measures ; the one is when we are 
^^ measuring ourselves by ourselves j " 



MEASURES 335 

the other, when we are ^^ comparing 
ourselves among ourselves ; " that 
is, measuring by others. Both are 
equally ^'unwise," for both come 
equally short of the divine rule. 
Many persons are always trying to 
measure up to their ideal and their 
aspirations and to the out-reaching 
of their poor souls, and the lofty 
ideals of humanity, as they are 
pleased to call them. They will tell 
us that they have lived up to their 
light and to their conscience and are 
satisfied with their opinions and con- 
tent with their lives, and that it is 
nobody's business but their own. 
They are measuring themselves by 
themselves. Some who have come 
upon a higher plane are measuriiig 



e336 god's measureless 

themselves by a past experience, by 
some memory of blessing, some little 
Mizar or some lofty mount to which 
they have risen in the distant past, 
and this, to them, is the type and 
ideal of all their life. And so, we 
find thousands trying to hold on to 
their experience or to get it back 
again, instead of remembericg that 
God is ^'able to do exceeding abund- 
antly above all we ask or think." 

Others again are ever comparing 
themselves with others, congratulat- 
ing themselves that they are as good 
as some of their standard, or aiming 
to resemble some human ideal. The 
result of this is to be seen in the hu- 
man traditions and the stereotyped 
patterns of Christian living, accord- 



MEASURES 337 

ing to which so many are moulding 
their dwarfed and wretched lives. 
All this is but human measuring ; 
all this is most unwise. From all 
this Paul turned to reach .up to God's 
measure, and, '^forgetting the things 
that were behind he pressed forward 
to the mark for the prize of the high 
calUng of God in Christ Jesus/' striv- 
ing that he might '^ apprehend that 
for which he was apprehended of 
Christ Jesus." It is a great thing to 
have a worthy ideal or pattern. It 
is better to aim high and miss it than 
it is to aim low and reach it. The 
famous artist was wise when he wept 
with bitter tears because he had 
reached his ideal. He could dream of 
nothing higher than he had achieved 



388 GOD^S MEASURELESS 

with his brush and to him the 
charm and inspiration of hfe had 
gone. 

We find a number of God's stand- 
ards and measures referred to in the 
Holy Scriptures, rising Hke the 
rounds of Jacob's ladder from earth 
to heaven. There is a simple phrase 
oft I'epeated in the New Testament 
and often overlooked, which ex- 
presses these measures and step- 
pings. It is the phrase ^^ according 
to/' two words which rise like the 
uprights of Jacob's ladder to the 
heavens, and across which many of 
the precious promises maybe seen in 
the vision of faith firmly fastened as 
heavenly steps leading higher and 
higher up to all the good and perfect 



MEASURES 339 

will of God. Let us glance at some 
of these heavenly measures. 

I. THE WILL OF GOD. 

This is at once the limitation and 
the inspiration of our faith and 
prayer. ^^If we ask anything ac- 
cording TO His will He heareth us." 
^^The Spirit maketh intercession for 
the saints according to the will of 
God." Beyond this our desires and 
our aspirations cannot go, but be- 
yond it they need not desire to go, 
for within it lie all the probabilities 
of blessing which a human and im- 
mortal life can receive ; and God's 
chief desire is to get us to see how 
much it means of blessing for us. 
As we have often said, there is no 



340 GOD^S MEASURELESS 

vaster prayer within the reach of 
faith than the simple sentence, ''Thy 
will be done." This will must mean 
for each of us our highest possible 
good. We know it includes our sal- 
vation, if we will accept salvation, 
for ''God will have all men to be 
saved. '^ We know it includes our 
sanctification, for "this is the will of 
God, even your sanctification." We 
know it includes our deliverance 
from physical evil if we will receive 
it in His Name in faith and obedi- 
ence, for He has said, "I will. Be 
thou clean." We know it includes 
every needed blessing that the obedi- 
ent can require, for He has said " He 
will withhold no good thing from 
them that walk uprightly." The 



MEASURES 341 

apostle^s prayer for his beloved 
friends was that they might have 
fulfilled in them ^^all the good pleas- 
ure of His goodness ; " and that they 
might ^^ prove that good and accept- 
able and perfect will of God." 

Beloved, are you measuring up to 
this divine rule ? Are you meeting all 
your Father's will ? Are you walk- 
ing/ ^worthy of Him to all pleasing/' 
and having fulfilled the benediction 
and prayer, that, ^^He may make 
you perfect in all things to do 
His will, working in you that which 
is pleasing in His sight through 
Jesus Christ to whom be glory for- 
ever and ever ? Ainen.'' 

II. raS WORD. 

^^ Behold the handmaid of the 



342 GOD^S MEASURELESS 

Lord ! " is the sublime response of 
Mary to the angel's astonishing mes- 
sage, ^^beit unto me according to 
thy word." Never was faith put to 
harder test. Never was woman 
asked to stand in so delicate a place 
of peril and possibility, of humbling 
shame and glorious everlasting 
honor. Realizing perhaps with 
every instinct of her maiden heart 
all that this might cost her, she 
meekly, unhesitatingly, without one 
question, one faltering breath, ac- 
cepted the stupendous promise and 
responsibility and rose to meet 
the divine measure, '^according to 
Thy word," and like an echo came 
back the heavenly benediction, 
^'Blessed is she that believed, for 



MEASURES 343 

there shall be a performance of those 
things that were told her from the 
Lord." 

Beloved, are you living up to this 
great measure ? Is faith resting and 
claiming, not according to signs and 
seemings, frames and feelings, but 
according to His word? Is obedi- 
ence walking, not according to the 
course of this world, or the moods of 
our capricious hearts, or the stand- 
ards of men, or the example of 
others, or the traditions even of the 
church, but according to His word ? 
Are we Bible Christians and deter- 
mined to believe and obey every 
word within these inspired and 
heavenly pages? Then we shall be 
found in ^'the way everlasting,'^ 



344 god's measureless 

for ^^fche grass withereth and the 
flower fadeth, but the word of our 
God shall stand forever/' and ^'he 
that doeth the will of God abideth 
forever." 

in. THE RICBES OF HIS GRACE. 

^^In whom we have redemption 
through His blood, ever the for- 
giveness of sins ACCORDING TO the 
riches of His grace, wherein He 
hath abounded towards us in all 
wisdom and prudence.'' Peter has 
used a parellel expression, ''ac- 
cording TO His abundant mercy He 
hath begotten us again unto a lively 
hope." This is God's standard and 
measure of salvation. He works 
and saves according to the riches of 



MEASURES 345 

His grace. He abounds towards us 
in all wisdom and prudence, that is, 
He adapts His mercy to every variety 
of guilt, and He anticipates, in His 
prudence and foresight every future 
emergency. He sees Peter from the 
beginning to the end of his career 
and accepts him ^^for better or for 
worse ; " and when the hour of his 
shameful fall is near. He can say, 
^^I have prayed for thee.'' So He 
takes every one of us and adjusts 
His infinite grace to all the minutiae 
of our sin and its worst aggravations, 
our corrupt and ruined nature and 
all its wreck, our weak and helpless 
will and all its inability to stand, our 
circumstances, our temptations and 
all that besets us. Knowing and 



346 god's measureless 

anticipating all, He just encompasses 
us in His everlasting arms and saves 
and keeps us, ^'according to the 
riches of His grace." 

Beloved, have you entered into 
the fullness of this measure and 
have you understood it in all its all- 
sufficiency for a lost world and the 
most wretched and ruined lives over 
whom you pray and love ? Oh, let 
our faith look up from lost human- 
ity, to the mighty love of God and 
'^the exceeding riches of His grace." 
And if there be a discouraged and 
guilty soul within reach of this 
message, may God help you, beloved 
one, to put your sins with all their 
aggravations side by side with God's 
immeasurable grace, until you shall 



MEASURES 347 

realize something of the Psahnist's 
sublime figure when he sang, ^^As 
far as the east is from the west, so 
far has God removed our trans- 
gressions from us. As high as the 
heaven is above the earth so great is 
His mercy toward them that fear 
Him." Our sins may have reached 
to the clouds until they have be- 
come like a ^^ thick cloud," but, 
thank God, '^His mercy is in the 
heavens," and far above the clouds. 

IV. THE RICHES OF HIS GLORY. 

Can we form any conception ci 
the riches of His glory? Moscc 
asked to see that glory but was iolC 
it was too bright for human gazt 
and only in the distance and frcn. 



348 god's measureless 

behind could he dare to look upon it. 
A little glimpse of it the disciples 
beheld on the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion, but they were afraid of its 
brightness and their eyes were over- 
come with slumber under its spell. 
^^The heavens declare His glory and 
the firmament showeth His handi- 
work/' and some conception of the 
riches of His power and majesty 
may be gathered from these glorious 
constellations and worlds of light 
which science is more fully explor- 
ing in these wondrous days. Some- 
times we have sat down and allowed 
our minds to dwell on the multitude 
of these discoveries and calculations. 
We have tried to take in the magni- 
tude of yonder planet many huii- 



MEASURES 3i9 

dred times larger than our world, and 
yonder sun outweighing the world 
many thousand-fold, and stars be- 
yond stars, 

*' Where system into systems runs 
And other planets circle other suns," 

until our brain whirls and threatens 
to collapse under the pressure of the 
sublimity; and ^^lo! these are part 
of His ways, but the full thunder of 
His power who can comprehend?" 
His hand holds all these orbs ; His 
will commands all these forces ; 
His wisdom poises all these spheres 
and directs them in their course 
without a jar or catastrophe; His 
sceptre sways this mighty empire ; 
His creating word called every 



350 god's measureless 

portion of it into being; His pro- 
vidence upholds it every moment ; 
His taste and goodness have adorned 
it with beauty and loveliness and en- 
riched it with happiness and bless- 
ing. There is not a creature among 
its inhabitants from the highest 
anchangel to the lowest insect but 
owes its being to His power and 
goodness. And all this is but ^Hhe 
hiding of His power" for His om- 
nipotence could call millions of such 
universes into being in a moment. 
Nay, all this is but a scaffolding for 
the glory which He is preparing for 
the abode of His redeemed. The 
riches of His glory will not be com- 
plete until the new heavens and 
earth shall have emerged from the 



MEASURES 351 

flames of a dissolTing world and 
the New Jerusalem descended from 
heaven in the glory of God with 
streets of gold and gates of pearl 
and foundations of precious gems, 
and all the thrones are reared, and 
crowns are set, and the mansions 
are completed, and the glorified are 
shining ' ' as the sun in the Kingdom 
of their Father," and we ourselves 
are crowned with all ^Hhe riches of 
His glory." 

Oh beloved ! we shall then under- 
stand something of the meaning of 
such verses as these, ^^I prey that 
God would grant you according 
TO the riches of His glory, to be 
strengthened by His spirit in the 
inner man, that Christ may dwell iij 



352 god's measureless 

your hearts by faith." Or again, 
^^Strengthened with all might ac- 
cording TO His glorious power unto 
all patience and long-suffering with 
joy fulness." Or again, ^^My God 
shall such supply all your need ac- 
cording TO the riches of His glory by 
Christ Jesus." It is according to the 
riches of His glory that He is working 
out the new creation in our hearts 
and preparing the more glorious tem- 
ple of the soul for His own eternal 
abode. It is according to the riches 
of His glory that He is willing to 
strengthen the heart for all patience 
and long-suffering. And it is accord- 
ing to the riches of His glory that He 
is able and ready to supply all our 
need. There is nothing too hard for 



MEASURES 353 

such a God, too rich and glorious for 
His wisdom, grace and love. He 
looks at the littleness of our faith 
and cries ^^Hast thou not known, 
hast thou not heard, that the ever- 
lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of 
the ends of the earth, fainteth not 
neith er is weary ? There is no search- 
ing of His understanding. He giv- 
eth power to the faint and to them 
that have no might he increaseth 
strength. '^ 

Beloved, let us lift up our eyes 
and behold the glory of our God 
and begin to walk as sons and heirs, 
and claim, even in our minority, 
something of the riches of His glory. 



354 god's measureless 

v. tbe resurrection and ascension 
of jesus christ. 
^^That ye may know what is the 
hope of His caUing and what the 
riches of the glory of His inheri- 
tance in the saints, and what is the 
exceeding greatness of His power to 
usward that beheve, according to 
the working of His mighty power, 
which He wrought in Christ, when 
He raised Him from the dead, and 
set Him at His own right hand in the 
heavenly places, far above all princi- 
pality and power and might and do- 
minion, and every name that is named, 
not only in this world, but also in 
that which is to come ; and hath put 
all things under His feet, and gave 
Him to be the Head over all things to 



MEASURES 365 

the churchy which is His body, the 
fulhiess of Him that fiUeth all in all." 
The resurrection and ascension of 
Jesus Christ have become for us the 
pledge and pattern of all our faith 
and hope can claim. The power that 
God hath wrought in Christ in rais- 
ing Him from the dead and setting 
Him upon His own right hand is the 
very same power which we may ex- 
pect Him to exercise to usward who 
believe. '/The riches of the glory 
of this inheritance in the saints" 
is the standard of what we may 
share in our spiritual experience 
now. God has performed for us the 
most stupendous miracle of grace 
and power and nothing can ever be 
too hard or too high for us to expect 



356 god's MEASCJRELESS 

from ^Hhe God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." The picture is 
a very definite as well as a very glori- 
ous one. Step by step we can ascend 
its transcendent and celestial heights 
with our ascending Lord, as we see 
Him rise, first above the mighty 
power of death, and then above and 
far above all principality and power 
and might and dominion and every 
name that is named, not only in this 
world but in that which is to come, 
until all things are beneath His feet. 
And then as we gaze upon His lofty 
pre-eminence we are permitted to sit 
down by His side and claim all the 
fullness of His glory as our own. 
For all His ascension power and maj- 
esty are, not for His own personal 



MEASURES 357 

exaltation, but that He might become 
the Head over all things for His body 
the church, and He takes His high 
pre-eminence as our Representative 
and recognizes us as already seated 
with Him in the heavenly place. 
His resurrection therefore, involves 
ours, His triumphs ours, His ascen- 
sion ours. His rights are shared with 
us. 

Do we require in our behalf the ex- 
ercise of an authority that transcends 
all other authority ? We have but to 
remember that He, our exalted Head, 
is sitting far above all principahties. 
Do we require a force to be exercised 
for us over- matching the mightiest 
forces of nature or of evil ? He is sit- 
ting far above all power and might. 



358 god's measureless 

Do we ask something which even 
natural law would seem to hinder? 
God already has done something in 
His resurrection which is superior to 
all law for that is what ^^ dominion" 
means. Are we confronted with im- 
posing names and despised by human 
pride ? We are sitting side by side 
with one who is exalted above every 
name that is named both in this 
world and that which is to come. "^ 
Indeed, the whole economy of human 
life, the whole system of providence 
is a framework for the accompHsh- 
ment of God's purposes for His re- 
deemed people. Nations rise and 
fall, human society exists, great cit- 
ies swarm with their inhabitants and 
move with the mighty currents of 



MEASURES 359 

commerce and social life. All the 
events of the great world as they 
pass are but movements of Christ's 
mighty hand^ primarily designed for 
those who immediately take part in 
them, but ultimately for the good of 
His church and the building up of His 
kingdom ; and men and nations are 
but puppets in the hands of our an- 
ointed King, whom He uses for His 
wise purposes even when they are 
fulfilling their own pleasure, and 
then drops them when He pleases. 
After the resurrection of Christ, sind 
in view of His enthronement there is 
nothing we need fear to claim accord 
ing to this mighty measure, as part 
of the riches of our inheritance. 



360 god's measureless 

vi. christ himself. 
We read in Eomans xv : ^'Accord- 
ing TO Christ Jesus. "This is the high- 
est of all standards^ higher even than 
His resurrection, ascension and glory. 
As He is, so shall we be when He ap- 
pears, but '' As He is so are we/' even 
here. ' ' Ye are not of the world even 
as I am not of the world." '^Love 
one another as I have loved you ; " 
''As I live by the Father so he that 
eateth me even he shall live by Me." 
''As Thou hast sent Me into the 
world even so send I them into the 
world." "When He shall appear 
we shall be like Him, for we shall 
see Him as He is." Such are some 
of the touches of heavenly light 
which reveal our identity with Jesus 



MEASURES 361 

and unfold the mystery of His life in 
us. Not only is He our example, 
but He is our life. Miniatures of 
Christy God expects us to be, receiv- 
ing and reflecting Him in all His full- 
ness, our life His life, our love His 
love. His riches ours. We represent 
Him, we dwell among men not as 
citizens of earth, but dead to our old 
citizenship and walking like Him as if 
we had been sent specially from heav- 
en on a mission from another world. 
Beloved, is Christ our Pattern, our 
Type, our living Head, our Divine 
Standard and Measure ? Are we de- 
termined to have nothing less and to 
be nothing less than even as He. Shall 
we cease to copy men, and follow 
only Him ! 



362 god's measureless 

And even though we oft are con- 
scious of very imperfect resemblance 
to the Great Original, are we still 
holding our standard as high as 
Christ? I have often noticed the 
artists in the great gallery copying 
the paintings of the masters. I have 
sometimes come back weeks after- 
wards and found them still Working 
on the copy of some great painting. 
Their work was not complete, but 
their copy was, and while it hung 
upon the wall with its perfect form 
and tints their copy was constantly 
reaching closer approximation to the 
great object lesson. But if they had 
begun to copy the works of the ar- 
tists around them or to complete the 
picture from their own recollection 



MEASURES 363 

or conception of it, it would have 
soon become a cheap and worthless 
daub. 

So let us always keep our eye upon 
the heavenly standard and be satis- 
fied with nothing less than ^^accord- 
ing TO Christ Jesus." Sometimes in 
Kindergarten schools a picture is held 
before the children for a little and 
then it is removed and they are re- 
quired to tell from memory some of 
its features. Then it is held again 
and they are again required to tell or 
draw some of the features that they 
have noticed and marked until, at 
length, the whole object lesson is 
imprinted like a copy upon their 
minds. So God holds Jesus before 
us and bids us, not only follow our 



364 god's measureless 

conception of Him, or the copies we 
see in others, but again and again 
contemplate the Original and hold 
Him constantly in view that even 
our conception of Christ shall be ever 
corrected, enlarged, vivified, until it 
shall be transformed to our inmost 
being, not only as the Pattern but as 
the very life of our life. 

^^ Christ men,'' as one has said, 
^^are the men God wants to-day." 
It would not hurt if this word be- 
came coined into Christian phraseol- 
ogy, and its meaning stamped upon 
all our life. A poor heathen Kroo 
boy came on board a ship, hundreds 
of miles from the Congo and finding 
a party of missionaries going up the 
river, eagerly sought an interview 



MEASURES 365 

with them and sent a message by 
them to one of the missionaries in 
the far interior. ^^ Tell him, " he said 
in his rude speech, ^Hhat when I left 
him two years ago I promised to be 
Christ's man. Tell him that I am 
Christ's man still." Eude and sim- 
ple as the heathen conception was it 
was the truest and the highest that 
mortal thought can reach. It is 
God's own divine measure of Chris- 
tian life, to be a ^^ Christ man," liv- 
ing, loving, trusting, serving, suffer- 
ing, overcoming, ^ ^according to 
Christ Jesus." 

VII. ACCORDING TO THE POWER THAT 
WORKETIl IN US. 

^'Now unto Him that is able to 



366 god's measureless 

do exceeding abundantly above all 
that we ask or think, according to 
the power that worketh in us" 
(Eph. iii : 20). 

^^Whereinto I also labor, striving 
ACCORDING TO the power that worketh 
in me mightly " (Col. i : 29). 

'^According to the working where- 
by lie is able to subdue all things 
unto Himself" (Phil, iii ; 21). 

In these passages we have God's 
present working referred to in two 
directions, namely, in the believer's 
heart and in the sphere of providence 
and government. The one must 
ever keep pace with the other. God 
does work mightily in the forces 
around us, but we must allow Him 
to work within us or all the might 



MEASURES 367 

of His providence shall be ineffectual 
for us. '^He is able to do exceeding 
abundantly/' but it must be wrought 
in us. It is ^'ACCORDING TO the power 
that worketh in us." All. the forces 
of that mighty engine in the factory 
yonder are limited and measured by 
the attachment of the little pulley 
of each particular machine. It can 
drive a hundred printing presses if 
they are in contact, but its power is 
ACCORDING TO the measure in which 
each one will receive it and co- 
operate. God is waiting to work in 
each of us, indeed He is already 
working up to the full measure of 
our yieldedness, and we may have 
all which we are willing to have 
inwrought in our own being. The 



368 god's measureless 

Holy Spirit is always in advance of 
us, pressing us on to more than we 
have yet wholly received and we 
may be very sure that according to 
the measure of His inward pressure 
will alw^ays be the external workings 
of God's Almighty hand. When- 
ever we find the wheels within in 
motion we may be very sure that 
the wheels of providence are moving 
in accord, even to the utmost bounds 
of the universe and to the utmost 
limits of God's Almighty power and 
supreme authority. 

Let us then yield to the power 
that worketh in us to its full meas- 
ure. Let our being be responsive to 
its slightest touch, so responsive 
that, like the ^olian harp^ it will 



MEASURES 369 

answer to the faintest breath of the 
Holy Spirit as He moves upon the 
chords of our inmost being. 

Vm. ACCORDING TO OUR FAITH. 

^^ According to th^ faith be it 
unto thee " was Christ's great law of 
heahng and blessing in His earthly 
ministry. This was what He meant 
when He said ^^ with what measure 
ye mete it shall be measured to you 
again." All these mighty measures 
that we have been holding up are 
limited by the measures that we 
bring. God deals out His heavenly 
treasures to us in these glorious ves- 
sels, but each of us must bring our 
drinking cup and according to its 
measure we shall be filled. But even 



370 GOD^S MEASURELESS 

the measure of our faith may be a 
divine one. Thank God, the httle 
cup has become enlarged through 
the grace of Jesus, until from its bot- 
tom there flows a pipe into the great 
ocean, and if that connection is kept 
open we shall find that our cup is as 
large as the ocean and never can be 
drained to the bottom. For He has 
said to us " Have the faith of God," 
and surely this is an illimitable meas- 
ure. 

A few weeks ago a noble band of 
missionaries landed upon the coast 
of Sierra Leone, filled with faith and 
holy enthusiasm. Before many days 
however three of their number had 
fallen victims to the dreadful African 
fever. Shortly afterwards one of 



MEASURES 371 

these dear brothers wrote to us a 
very touching and wonderful mes- 
sage. He said that on his way across 
the Atlantic he had been led to see 
the truth of divine healing and had 
taken the Lord Jesus as his-healer. 
Soon after, the death of these friends 
came upon him like a bewildering 
shock and for a few hours his faith 
ssemed to be wholly paralyzed. Then 
he threw himself at the feet of Jesus 
and to his surprise there came upon 
him such a baptism of rest and con- 
fidence, with which he seemed to 
have nothing to do, that he rose 
not only comforted, but so estab- 
lished in His confidence, so assured 
that the Lord was his healer and 
keeper that he had no fear even of 



372 god's measureless 

the failure of his faith, but was 
able to say with humble and holy 
confidence that come what might he 
would trust the Lord alone, and was 
confident that his life and faith 
would be upheld until his work was 
done. His old faith had died, and 
out of its grave had come the faith 
of God. His little drinking cup had 
broken, and all the water had leaked 
out, but lo ! a hand divine had open- 
ed through that broken cup a con- 
iiection with that heavenly fountain, 
and henceforth his cup was not only 
full but full f orevermore with all the 
fullness of God. He had passed out 
of himself into Christ* and was now 
able to meet the immeasurable 
promises with a trust as measureless 
and divine. 



MEASURES 3^3 

So let us, beloved, rise into the 
fullness of Jesus and sweetly 

**Find His fullness round our incomplete. 
ness, 
Round our restlessness His rest." 






SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 



*'But grow in grace and in the knowledge 
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."— 2 
Peter iii: 18. 

1| HAVE heard, of a little boy being 
^ found by his mother in one of 
the garden beds with his feet buried 
in the soil^ and standing beside a tall 
sunflower, to which he was eagerly 
looking up. When his mother asked 
him what it all meant, he said that 
he was trying to grow to be a man, 
and wanted to be as tall as the sun- 
flower. How truly has our Master 
said of all our struggles to grow 
taller, ^' Which of you by taking 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 375 

thought can add one cubit to his 
stature?" All the little fellow's 
stretching did not increase his 
height. No doubt his mother told 
him to go inside and eat a good 
hearty supper, and day by day drink 
plenty of fresh milk and eat his meals 
with heartiness, and run about and 
play for wholesome exercise and be 
a happy, thoughtless child, and thus 
he would grow to be a man without 
trying. His desire to grow would 
not really help him to grow unless he 
took the proper means. 

It is just so in our spiritual life. 
Fretting and straining will not en- 
large our spiritual manhood. God 
has Himself revealed the secret of 
growth, and it is not very different 



876 SPIRlTtJAL GROWTH 

from the mother's counsel to her 
little boy. 

Let us look at some principles of 
spiritual progress. 

I. THE RELATION OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH 
TO SANCTIFICATION. 

The apostle who has given us our 
text had already laid down the 
principles of spiritual growth in the 
opening chapter of his epistle with 
great fullness and marvelous clear- 
ness and power. There is no single 
paragraph in the Sriptures which 
more profoundly unfolds the depths 
and heights of Christian life than 
the first eleven verses of the first 
chapter of 2nd Peter. And the very 
point we are now referring to is 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 377 

made perfectly plain in these verses. 
The fifth verse is an injunction to 
grow in grace, but the preceding 
verses give us the standpoint from 
which this growth is to ^tart. It is 
nothing less than the experience of 
sanctification. The persons to whom 
this is addressed are recognized as 
having already ^' escaped the corrup- 
tion that is in the world through 
lust3"and having already ^^ become 
partakers of the divine nature." 

These two facts constitute the 
whole of sanctification. It is that 
experience by which we become 
united to Christ in so divine and 
personal a sense tha^ we become par- 
takers of His nature, and the very 
person of Christ, through the Holy 



378 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

Ghost, comes to dwell in our hearts, 
and by His indwelling becomes to 
us the substance and support of our 
spiritual life. The converted soul is 
a human spirit born from above by 
the power of the Holy Spirit. The 
sanctified soul is that human spirit 
wholly yielded to and wholly pos- 
sessed and occupied by God's indwell- 
ing presence, so as to be able to say, 
^'Not I, but Christ liveth in me.'^ 
The effect of this is to deliver from 
" the corruption that is in the world 
through lust.'' God's indwelling 
excludes the power of sin and evil 
desire, which is just what the word 
lust means. The Greek tenses here 
leave no room to doubt the question 
of time and the order of events. 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 379 

This deliverance from corruption 
precedes the command to grow, and 
is the very ground of that command. 
For the word translated ^^ besides 
this/' as Alford so happily shows, 
means something entirely different, 
namely, " for this very reason," that 
is, because God hath provided for 
our sanctification, and imparted to 
us His nature and delivered us from 
the power of sin, for this very reason 
we are to grow. 

It is very evident, therefore, that 
we do not grow into sanctification, 
but grow from sanctification into 
maturity. This corresponds exactly 
with the description of the growth 
of Christ Himself in the opening of 
the gospel of Luke. ^^ The child 



380 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

grew and waxed strong in spirit 
filled with wisdom, and the grace of 
God was upon Him." Surely no one 
will dare to say that He grew into 
sanctification. He was sanctified 
from the very first. But He was a 
sanctified child and grew into man- 
hood. And so still later, in Luke ii : 
5, it is added thiat, at the age of 
twelve years, ^^ Jesus grew in wis- 
dom, and stature, and in favor with 
God and man." 

And so the same Christ is formed 
in each of us ; is formed as a babe 
and grows, as He did on earth, into 
maturity in our spiritual life, and we 
grow into a closer union with Him, 
and a more habitual and intimate 
dependence upon Him for all our life 
and actions. 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 381 

Beloved, have we come to the 
starting point of spiritual growth by 
receiving Christ as our indwelling 
sanctifier and life ? 

n. THE RELATION OF GROWTH TO THE 

PROVISIONS AND RESOURCES 

OF DININE GRACE. 

The same beautiful passage brings 
this out also in great fullness and 
definiteness. ^^ According as His 
divine power hath given unto us all 
things that pertain to life and godli- 
ness, through the knowledge of Him 
that hath called us to His glory and 
virtue. Whereby are given unto us 
exceeding great and precious prom- 
ises." Here we are taught that God 
hath provided all the resources nee- 



382 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

essary for a holy and mature Chris- 
tian life. These resources are pro- 
vided for us through the graces and 
virtues of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
which we are called to receive and 
share. ^^He hath called us," not to 
our glory and virtue, but ^Ho His 
glory and virtue." It is the same 
thought which the same apostle ex- 
presses in his first epistle, ii : 9, 
^^That ye should show forth the 
excellencies of Him who hath called 
you out of darkness into His mar- 
velous light." Not, ^^ the praises of 
Him," which is obviously a bad 
translation, but ^Hhe excellencies." 
We are to display the excellencies 
of Jesus to the world, or, as it is 
here, ^'The glory and virtue of 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 383 

Jesus." He clothes us with His 
character and in His garments, and 
we are to exhibit them to men and 
to angels. And these provisions of 
grace are brought within our reach 
through all ^^ the exceeding great and 
precious promises/' which we may 
claim and turn into heavenly cur- 
rency for every needed blessing. 

This is the conception of Christian 
Ufe given in the first chapter of the 
gospel of John, in that wonderful 
little expression ''grace for grace." 
That is to say, every grace that we 
need to exercise already exists in 
Christ, and may be transferred into 
our life from Him, as we ''receive 
of His fullness, even grace for grace." 
Up in yonder mount Moses was call- 



384 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

ed to see and study a model of the 
Tabernacle, corresponding in a higher 
degree to the models which you may 
see in the Patent Office in "Washing- 
ton of all the different machines 
that have been patented and built. 
A few weeks later the same Taber- 
nacle niight be seen going up piece- 
meal in the valley below, and, when 
completed, was an exact fac-simile 
of the other shown to Moses in the 
mount ; for God's explicit command 
was, " See that thou make all things 
according to the pattern which was 
shewed thee in the mount." Cor- 
responding to this is the tabernacle 
which God is building in each of 
our lives. It is just as heavenly a 
structure as the other and far more 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 385 

important, and is meant to be, as it 
is, the dwelling-place of God. It, 
too, has its model in the mount, and 
we may see, by the eye of faith, the 
model of our life, the pattern, the 
plan of all the graces which we 
exemplify and the life which is to be 
built up, worked out, and established. 
All the material for our spiritual 
building are there now, already pro- 
vided, and the whole design fully 
wrought out in the, purpose of God 
and the provisions of His grace. 
But we have to take these resources 
and materials moment by moment, 
step by step, and transfer them into 
our lives. We have not to make the 
graces ourselves, but take them, wear 
them, live them, and exhibit them. 



886 SPlRlTtJAL GROWTH 

^'Of His fullness we receive grace 
for grace/' His graces for our graces, 
His love for our love, His trust for 
our trust, His power for our 
strength. 

Over in an English factory you can 
find numerous models of iron cot- 
tages, composed of hundreds of sec- 
tions screwed together, and standing 
just as they would appear when 
erected on their permanent site. The 
purchaser from a distant colony, 
where wood is scarce and metal has 
to be used instead, comes along and 
purchases one of these cottages, and 
orders it to be shipped to Australia, 
with the understanding that it shall 
correspond in every particular to the 
model in the London yard. The 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 387 

order is fulfilled, and a few months 
later you may see the identical fac- 
simile standing in a pleasant lawn in 
Melbourne or Sidney, or a few weeks 
sooner you may see the sections 
arrive piece by piece, and the differ- 
ent pieces screwed together until the 
building is complete, and corresponds 
in every particular to the London 
model. All the materials have been 
sent from the distant city, and the 
structure reared according to the 
model, piece for piece. This will 
illustrate what John meant by 
^' grace for grace." Christ has, in 
Himself, the pattern of your life and 
mine, and all the materials. Our part 
is simply to receive, live out and 
exemplify them before the world. 



388 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

III. RELATION OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

TO OUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY 

AND EFFORTS. 

While it is true, on the one hand, 
that all the resources are divinely 
provided, this does not justify, on 
our part, a spirit of passive negli- 
gence, but summons us all the 
more to diligence and earnestness 
in pressing forward in our spiritual 
career. And so the apostle adds, 
after this strongly emphasized enu- 
meration of the resources of God's 
grace, ^^ Giving all diligence, add to 
your faith," etc. There is to be no 
languid leaning upon God's grace, 
no dreamy fatalism, based upon His 
almighty purpose and power, but a 
strenuous and unceasing energy on 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 389 

our part in meeting Him with the 
co-operation of our faith, vigilance 
and obedience. In fact, the very 
provisions of God's grace are made, 
by the apostle, the ground of His ex- 
hortation to give earnest attention 
to this matter. For this very rea- 
son, that is, because God has so 
abundantly provided for us, and is 
so mightily working incur lives, and 
hearts and developing us from the 
power of sin, for this very reason, 
^^ Add to your faith," etc. 

It is the same thought which Paul 
has expressed in Philippians, ^^Work 
out your own salvation with fear 
and trembling. For it is God that 
worketh in you to will and to do of 
His good pleasure." This does not 



390 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

mean that we are to work for oui 
salvation, for we are represented as 
already saved, otherwise it could not 
be '^our own salvation." But it is yet 
in embryo and infancy, an inward 
principle of life which must be 
worked out into its full develop- 
ment and maturity in every part of 
our life, and to this we are *'to giv^e 
all diligence," a diligence indeed, 
which often reaches the extent of 
fear and trembling," a holy and 
solemn sense of responsibility to 
make the most of our spiritual 
resources and opportunities, be- 
cause ^^it is God that worketh in 
us." It is as if, with the finger of 
solemn warning raised. He were 
standing and looking .into our eyes 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 391 

and saying, ^^God has come. The 
Almighty has taken this matter in 
hand. The Eternal Jehovah has 
undertaken the work, therefore, 
mind what you do ! Let. there be 
no laxness, no neghgence, and no 
failure on your part to meet Him 
and afford Him the utmost oppor- 
tunity to filfiU in you all the good 
pleasure of His will, and the accom- 
plishment of His high and mighty 
purpose for your soul." 

In our Sunday school lesson, with- 
in the last few weeks, we have had 
a very solemn thought, whose most 
impressive point has perhaps escaped 
the thought of some of us. It is in 
connection with the parable of the 
pounds, and the thought we refer to 



392 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

is the obvious truth there unfolded, 
that to every servant is given at the 
beginning of his spiritual life, an 
equal measure of spiritual resource, 
and that the difference in the issues 
of human lives is not to be found in 
the unequal measure of grace and 
power afforded from on high, but in 
the unequal measure in which they 
have improved the power given. One 
pound is given to each servant, but 
in the end, one servant has so traded 
with his pound that it has grown to 
ten, while his neighbor has the same 
little pound wrapped up in a napkin, 
unchanged, unimproved. The differ- 
ence lies wholly in the diligence of 
the two men. The one ^^ giving all 
diligence " added to his faith virtue, 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 393 

knowledge, temperance. The other 
simply tried to keep what he got and 
probably took excellent care of it, 
wrapping it in a costly handkerchief 
may be, or putting it into a secret 
drawer or worthy place, but doing 
nothing to increase it. ''The mani- 
festation of the Spirit is given to 
every man," the apostle says, ^'to 
profit withal. '' This expression, ' ' to 
profit," carries the same idea with it 
as the trading in the parable of the 
pounds and the ''all diligence" of 
Peter's epistle. 

Beloved are we "giving all dili- 
gence " to make the most of God's 
divine resources, of "the exceeding 
great and precious promises," of "the 
divine nature " within us ? 



394 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

IV. THE RELATION OF THE VARIOUS 
DETAILS AND THE RESPECTIVE 
GRACES OF OUR CHRIS- 
TIAN LIFE. 

The verse employed to describe 
our spiritual progress is a very un- 
usual one and full of exquisite sug- 
gestiveness. It is a musical figure, 
and we all know that there is noth- 
ing that so perfectly expresses the 
idea of harmony and adjustment as 
music. Paraphrased into the Eng- 
lish meaning of the figure the pas- 
sage might thus be read, ^^Add to 
your faith, virtue, knowledge, tem- 
perance, '^ etc, just as in a perfect 
musical harmony one note is added 
to another and one chord to another 
until the majestic Hallelujah Chorus 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 395 

swells to heaven without a discord- 
ant part or measure wanting. 

In the Greek national festivals it 
was customary for some prominent 
and gifted individual to get up a 
chorus or special musical entertain- 
ment, and the one to whom this high 
trust was committed was called the 
" Clioregos.^^ From this our word 
choir has been derived. He was 
really the choir master and his busi- 
ness was to combine together the 
voices, the instruments and the musi- 
cal compositions in such a manner 
as to produce the most perfect effect 
and the most complete harmony. 
So the Greek verb based on this 
word, " Epichorego,'''' just means to 
combine together as a musical har- 



396 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

mony, or as a choir-master would 
combine the notes, the instruments, 
the voices and all the parts in a 
splendid performance. This is the 
beautiful verb imperfectly transla- 
ted. A dry figure of arithmetic is 
unhappily substituted for a sugges- 
tive musical metaphor. 

Perhaps we have already antici- 
pated the fine thought lying back of 
this figure, viz : that God wishes 
our Christian growth to be like the 
growth of a sublime oratorio, a 
growth in which all the parts are so 
blended and the entire effect so har- 
monious that our life will be like 
a heavenly song or a Hallelujah 
Chorus. Faith is the melody, but to 
this is added all the other parts^ 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 397 

courage which reaches the high 
tenor, temperance perhaps the 
medium alto, patience the deep 
bass, and knowledge, godliness and 
love, the song itself, to which all the 
music is but the accompaniment. 
It is easy to grow in one direction 
and to be strong in one peculiarity, 
but only the grace of God and the 
power of the Divine nature within 
can enable us to grow up to Him in 
all things, ^^unto the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ." It 
is one thing to have faith and cour- 
age, but it is another thing to have 
that blended with temperance and 
love. It is one thing to have self- 
restraint, but it is another thing to 
have it combined with knowledge. 



398 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

It is one thing to have brotherly 
kindness, but it is quite another to 
have charity to all men. It is one 
thing to have godliness but it is an- 
other to have it in perfect adjust- 
ment with love. It is the harmony 
with all the parts which constitutes 
the perfection of the song and the 
completeness of the Christian life. 

Beloved, perhaps God has educated 
you in each of the graces but He is 
now educating you in the blending 
of these graces in perfect proportion, 
so that your love will be rendered 
mellow and like a perfectly propor- 
tioned face, not so marked in any of 
its single features as in the whole 
expression of the countenance. In- 
deed the most beautiful faces are 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 399 

sometimes so proportioned that we 
can scarcely remember a single feat- 
ure, and perhaps the best musical 
compositions are those which leave 
the simplest effects and ' are less 
striking for any particular measure 
than for the exquisite sweetness 
and simplicity of the whole. This 
is the heavenly meaning brought out 
in the preposition ^^m"all through 
this progression. . It is not add to 
your faith courage, but ^^m your faith 
courage, knowledge, temperance, 
etc." It is in the intermingling and 
the tempering of one grace with an- 
other that the power of the whole 
consists. It is the addition of cour- 
age along with the faith which 
renders the faith effectual. It is 



400 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

the addition of self-restraint along 
with patience which keeps it from 
becoming fanaticism, and zeal with- 
out knowledge. It is in the quality 
of temperance and self-control com- 
bined with knowledge that the ele- 
ments of discretion and wisdom are 
developed. But self-control and 
self-denial need patience to save 
them from being transitory out- 
bursts and to give them permanence 
and stability. All these qualities 
without godliness would leave us on 
a low plane, but this lifts them all 
to heaven and makes them all a 
living sacrifice upon the altar of 
His glory. But even godliness alone 
would leave us narrow and cold, and 
so God requires of us the inner link- 



SPmiTtJAL GROWTH 401 

ing with our brethren and the cul- 
ture of these social qualities which 
brings us into loving fellowship with 
one another and lifts us out of our- 
selves iuto brotherly kindness, that 
is the love of the brethren, the love 
of Christ's people. And yet even 
this would not be complete if the 
circle were not widened far beyond 
the range of Christ's people and our 
brethren in the Lord, to comprehend 
the whole world in the sweep of a 
charity which can love even as God 
loves, the unworthy, the unattrac- 
tive and even those that hate us and 
repel us. 

It is very beautiful to notice the 
fine shades of holy character which 
the New Testament expresses. For 



402 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

example, what a multitude of words 
the Holy Spmt has given us for the 
various forms of love and patience. 
Here are some of them : love^ char- 
ity, brotherly kindness, tenderness, 
meekness, long-suffering, patience, 
forbearance, unity, peace, courtesy, 
gentleness, considering one another, 
in honor preferring one another, 
kindly affectioned one to another, 
etc. They are like so many fine 
shades of color, all of the same class, 
yet no two exactly the same. Thus 
God is tempering our lives and this 
is a very large part of Christian 
growth. 

It is said that a great sculptor was 
visited by a friend twice, at an in- 
terval of several months. The friend 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 403 

was astonished to find that his work 
seemed no further on. ^^What 
have you been doing?" ^^Why," he 
said, ^^I have been touching this 
feature, rounding that, raising that." 
^'Why, but these are all trifles, 
mere touches!" ^^Yes," said the 
artist, '^but these make perfection 
and perfection is no trifle." It is an 
old story but a spiritual lesson which 
is very far from worn out. God 
keeps us sometimes years learning 
a few touches of heavenliness, which 
constitutes the difference between 
the image of Christ and the blun- 
dered and broken image of an im- 
perfect man. 



404 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

V. THE RELATION OF GROWTH TO OUR 

SECURITY AND STEADFASTNESS IN 

CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

It is not a matter of personal pre- 
ference whether we shall grow or 
not. It is a matter of vital neces- 
sity, for only thus can we be kept 
from retrograding. This the apostle 
hints in our text, ^^ Beware lest ye 
also, being led away with the error 
of the wicked, fall from your own 
steadfastness. But grow in grace 
and in the knowledge of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ.'' Growth 
is the remedy for declension and we 
must ever grow or go backward. So, 
in 1 Peter ii : the same truth is ex- 
pounded. ^^If ye do these things 
ye shall never fall. He that lacketh 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 405 

these things is Mind and cannot see 
afar off, and hath forgotten that he 
was purged from his old sins." 
That is the rery experience of con- 
version — it fades away and becomes 
but a dim recollection unless we 
press on to deeper and higher things. 
Alas ! have we not all sometimes 
seen men truly and wonderfully con- 
verted and much used of God for 
the conversion even of others, and 
yet men who refused to go on to 
higher experiences^ and sometimes 
even have scouted the doctrine 
and experience of sanctification as 
an affectation or fanaticism. Alas ! 
the day came when even their ex- 
perience of conversion faded, at least 
for a time, and they were plunged in 



406 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

some deep and bitter fall to compel 
them to see the need of something 
higher. It is not possible for us to 
remain with safety in any stereo- 
typed experience. Indeed, it is nec- 
essary for us to grow with an accel- 
erated motion and to make more 
rapid progress the longer we continue 
in the Christian life. 

And so we have a very strong 
figure even in this passage express- 
ing this thought. The word trans- 
lated ' ^abound " in our version, in the 
Greek is ^^ multiply." '^If these 
things be in you and multiply, they 
shall make you that ye shall neither 
be barren nor unfruitful in the 
knowledge of our Lord Jesus. " Let 
us not fail to notice the striking 



• Spiritual growth 407 

antithesis of the ^^add" inverse 3, 
and the '' multiply" of verse 8. We 
all know in arithmetic the difference 
between addition and multiphcation. 
The addition of nine to nine 
makes eighteen, but the multiplica- 
tion of nine into nine reverses the 
figures and makes eighty-one, or 
nearly five times as much. Every- 
thing depends upon the size of the 
multiplier. In the spiritual arith- 
metic the multiplier is God and in- 
finitely higher than the highest 
digits of human calculation. God 
simply takes the surrendered heart 
and unites Himself with it, and the 
result is as many times greater than 
itself as God is greater than man. 
Beloved, shall we meet God's ex- 



408 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

pectation and provision and press on 
from grace to grace and from grace 
to glory ? 

VI. THE RELATION OF GROWTH TO 
REWARD. 

The apostle carries on the thought 
to the sublime consummation when 
the struggles and trials of time shall 
all have passed and we shall be 
entering the eternal port and com- 
ing into the eternal issues of our 
present lives/ Then no struggle will 
be regarded as too severe, no self- 
denial will be regretted, no toilsome 
patient victory will be remembered 
as too trying, but these very things 
will constitute the exquisite joy and 
recompense of our eternal home- 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 409 

coming. ^^For so/' he says, ^^an 
entrance shall be ministered unto 
you abundantly into the everlasting 
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ." How it lights up 
this whole passage with a wondrous 
glory to remember that the Greek 
word used here to describe our en- 
trance into the kingdom is the very 
same Greek word used with respect 
to the ^^ adding" to our faith virtue, 
knowledge, temperance, godliness, 
and all the train of heavenly graces. 
It is the beautiful metaphor of the 
' ' choregos. " It is not that an abund- 
ant entrance merely shall be minis- 
tered unto us, but the idea is that a 
whole chorus of heavenly voices and 
harmonies will sing us home, and 



410 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

that we shall enter like warriors re- 
turning in triumphal procession from 
a hard- won and glorious victory. It 
is not merely that a chorus will meet 
us, but it is the very same choir that 
we ourselves gathered around us in 
our earthly conflict. The graces, the 
virtues, the victories, the triumphs 
of patience and love that we won 
and perhaps had quite forgotten will 
all be waiting yonder like troops of 
angels, and all shall gather round us 
and fit into the chorus of joy that 
shall celebrate our home coming. 

Sometimes God has given us a lit- 
tle taste on earth of this ecstatic joy, 
when some ministry of love that we 
had loDg ago forgotten comes back 
to our recollection through the f riencl 



SPIRITUAL GROWTH 411 

whom we had been the means of 
saving, or some word or deed is re- 
called by the testimony of one to 
whom we were made a blessing 
through an act of self-denial or faith- 
fulness ; and we find, a quarter of a 
century afterwards, that the little 
service has been traveling round the 
world and blessing hundreds on the 
way. We are melted into grateful 
wonder and adoring praise. 

But these are but approximations 
of what it will be then, when all 
that we have been permitted to suf- 
fer and do for Jesus will be found 
awaiting us on the threshold of glory, 
and shall usher her in triumphal pro- 
cession into the eternal kingdom of' 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 



412 SPIRITUAL GROWTH 

Oh how we shall rejoice that we were 
permitted once to suffer and sacrifice 
for Jesus ! Oh, how some will wish 
that they might have once more the 
opportunity of winning such a wel- 
come and gaining such a great re- 
ward. Beloved, nothing that we 
gain for God can ever be lost. Oh, 
may the Master help us, ^^ giving all 
diligence," to make the most of hfe 
and all its opportunities and resources 
of grace and lay up for ourselves 
treasures on high which shall never 
fade away. 



ENLARGED WORK. 



"Enlarge the place of thy tent." Isa. Iv : 

Mbout one hundred years ago a 
^^ humble Baptist preacher stood 
in an Enghsh pulpit and announced 
this text at the opening of what was 
perhaps the first Missionary Con- 
vention of modern times. He then 
proposed the two following divisions 
as the themes of his discourse. 1. 
Attempt great things for God. 2. 
Expect great things from God. And 
then from these two propositions, 
themselves inspiring enough to im- 
pel the whole missionary movement, 
he proceeded to preach a sermojx 



414 ENLARGED WORK 

which became the watchword of 
the greatest Christian moyement, 
since Apostolic days. That was the 
birthday of modern missions. Soon 
he himself was a missionary in 
Calcutta, and to-da^ an army of 
missionaries is girdling the world 
and about to multiply more and 
more every year until the Master 
comes. The preacher had been one 
of those whom the Lord delights to 
use, — one of the weak things, and 
the things that are despised. A 
humble cobbler, he had supported 
himself by toiling all day long at 
his last, but while his hands were 
busy, his heart was out upon the 
world, and his eyes were often upon 
the maps that lined the walls of his 



ENLARGED WORK 415 

workshop, and the calculations and 
plans for the world's evangelization. 
Deep down in his heart had grown 
up a mighty faith for the lost mil- 
hons of mankind, and his great 
sermon was but the outbreaking of 
the pent-up fires that had long 
been burning in his breast. It was 
the voice of God to his generation. 
It is the voice of God to another 
generation, the generation of to-day. 
It is the voice of God to us, beloved. 
Fresh from the hallowed influences 
that have so deeply moved our hearts 
and blessed so many here, God is 
pointing to a world where a thous- 
and millions still are lost, and saying 
to us — ^^ Enlarge the place of thy 
tent^ fear not, lengthen thy cordg 



416 ENLARGED WORK 

and strengthen thy stakes, let them 
stretch forth the curtains of thine 
habitations on the right hand and 
on the left. For thy Maker is thy 
husband, the Lord of Hosts in His 
name, and thy Eedeemer the Holy 
One of Israel, the God of the whole 
earth shall He be called.'' 
Three thoughts are here suggested. 

I. ENLARGEMENT. 

God's plan for all His work is to 
begin in feebleness and expand and 
develop to maturity. He first makes 
a perfect sample and then multiplies 
re. So the work He has done for us 
is but a sample of what He can do, 
and wants to do for all the world. 
The blessing that has filled and 



ENLARGED WORK 417 

thrilled our hearts these past days, 
may be multiplied as many times 
as there are cities in the worlds and 
reproduced wherever there are hun- 
gry hearts to fill and messengers to 
tell of the grace and the fullness of 
Jesus. That gospel of the Saviour's 
fullness that has filled your heart can 
fill a thousand million hearts. That 
faith which has brought you deliver- 
ance can deliver all the captives of 
the great oppressor and set the 
whole world free. That humble 
work which has grown up out of 
^' a handful of corn on the top of 
the mountains " can become a mighty 
forest on all the mountains and 
^^ shake like Lebanon, and they of the 
city flourish like the grass of the field. " 



418 ENLARGED WORK 

God has simply been making sam- 
ples, but He can multiply them by 
millions. Will we let Him use us for 
their reproduction, for they are mul- 
tiplied by reproduction. They are 
not made as the machines in yonder 
factory, but they grow as seeds mul- 
tiply, as yonder geraniums by cultur- 
ings,as that oak by the seeds it drops 
into the ground, or that single grain 
of wheat that sometimes sends up 
twenty stalks from a single seed, and 
each stalk bears half a hundred seeds. 
God has given us in this blessed work 
a gospel so full that it needs a world 
for its field. He is showing us the 
plan of a Christian church, that is 
much more than an association of . 
congenial friends to listen once a 



ENLARGED WORE:: 419 

week to an intellectual and musical 
entertainment and carry on by proxy 
a mechanism of Christian work; but 
rather a church that can be at once 
the mother and the home of every 
form of help and blessing which 
Jesus came to give to lost and suffer- 
ing men, the birth-place and the 
home of souls, the fountain of heal- 
ing and cleansing, the sheltering 
home for the orphan and distressed, 
the school for the culture and train- 
ing of God's children, the armory 
where they are equipped for the bat- 
tle of the Lord and the army which 
fights those battles in His name. 
Such a centre of life and power 
Christ wants in every centre of pop- 
ulation in this sad and sinful world. 



420 ENLARGED WORK 

The figure of enlargement is that 
of a tent ; its curtains are to be 
stretched forth and its cords are to be 
lengthened. These curtains are sure- 
ly the promises and provisions of the 
Gospel, and they will stretch as wide 
as the needs of human lives and the 
multitudes that seek their shelter. 
The cords are cords of prayer, cords 
of faith, cords of love, cords of holy 
effort and service. He bids us length- 
en the cords of prayer. Let us ask 
more, but let the strands of faith be 
as long and strong. Let us beheve 
more fully, more firmly, and for a 
wider circle than we have dared be- 
fore. Let the cords of lore be length- 
ened until we shall draw men to 
Christ with the very cords of our 



ENLARGED WORK 421 

hearts. Let our efforts for His king- 
dom reach a wider circle. Let each 
of us make the world our parish, and 
as the Bride of the Lamb realize that 
all that concerns our Lord's king- 
dom concerns our hearts, ^^For our 
Maker is our husband, the Lord of 
Hosts is His name, the God of the 
whole earth shall He be called." 

God has committed to our trust the 
gospel in its fullness. Let us noTer 
rest until in all its fullness it is known 
in every hamlet of this great land 
and in every land and tongue. 

And we must lengthen the cords 
of our liberality. The Lord is asking 
for millions to-day to spread His gos- 
pel in its fullness over the world, and 
we to whom this full gospel has been 



422 ENLARGED WORK 

such a blessing are especially called 
to take it as our trust for Him and 
send it everywhere. The world is 
open to-day and the workers are be- 
ing prepared as n^ver before, men 
and women full of faith and the Holy 
Ghost. Never was there a time when 
a little money would go so far in 
spreading Christ's Word. Less than 
ten millions to-day would evangelize 
all the world before the close of the 
century. 

When I think of the opportunity 
of using money for God to-day, i 
could almost envy the men who have 
the opportunities of successful busi- 
ness. God is going to send very large 
amounts into the treasuries of conse- 
crated worky and if we are but true 



ENLARaED WORK 423 

to this trust we shall yet see tens of 
millions spent in sending the four- 
fold gospel to every corner of the 
globe. 

n. CONSOLIDATION. 

But the wider our work the strong- 
er it must be at the centre. And 
therefore as the cords are lengthened 
the stakes must also be strengthened. 
What are these stakes ? 

1. Surely God's Word is the first. 
The more wide-spread the work God 
gives us to do the more important is 
it that we be true to the great stand- 
ard of truth, the Bible and the gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ. This is the day 
of new theologies and loose views of 
evangelical truth. More sacredly 



424: ENLARGED WORK 

than ever does the Master require us 
to stand faithful to the cross of Jesus 
Christ, the doctrine of man's sin and 
ruin, the great atonement, the in- 
spiration of the Holy Scriptures, the 
person and work of the Holy Ghost 
and the certainties of future retribu- 
tion and reward. Thank God we do 
not have to resort to the novelties of 
rationalism to attract the multitudes. 
Give them the Living Bread, the 
atoning blood, the old and ever new 
story of Jesus and His love. 

2. Personal holiness. This is the 
next safeguard of the Lord's work. 
God cannot trust an unsanctified peo- 
ple or an unconsecrated man with 
much service for Him. Poor Jonah 
is sure to mar his most successful 



ENLARGED WORK 425 

work with a touch of himself. The 
more God entrusts to our hands the 
more humbly let us lie at His feet 
and the more faithfully use our trust 
for His glory. This is one of the 
wise things the Salvation Army has 
done. It has required all its officers 
to be sanctified men and women. 
Such a work can afford to be suc- 
cessful. God grant us wisdom to 
see to it, that all who bear the vessels 
of the Lord are clean. So shall He 
give us the world itself for our inheri- 
tance. 

3. The spirit of self-sacrifice. No 
work can ever be glorious without the 
martyr spirit. Luxury is killing the 
churches to-day, and the only remedy 
for it i^ the r^d blood of sacrifice, 



426 ENLARGED WORK 

Great faith and great sacrifice will 
always be found together. This 
must be the spirit of this work if it 
is to cover the world. We must be 
willing to endure hardness as good 
soldiers of Jesus Christ. We must 
be indifferent to popularity^ and hu- 
man praise or blame, we must be 
willing to live with great simplicity 
and rigid economy, we must be will- 
ing to be misunderstood aud perse- 
cuted, we must be glad to be the 
companions of the lowly and de- 
spised, we must gladly face toil, 
hardship and even death, and count 
all things but loss for Christ and 
His kingdom. Such a people only 
can possess the world for Christ 
and such soldiers shall march to 



ENLARGED WORK 427 

world-wide victory while the splendid 
brigades of rank and luxury shall 
fail in the day of battle and prove 
but a splendid pageant and a dress 
parade. 

God give us the spirit of Script- 
ural faith, personal consecration and 
true self-sacrifice, and then He can 
give us the world for Christ. 

The figure of the tent suggests 
the idea of constant vicissitudes 
and humility. This is no proud ar- 
chitectural pile but a simple tent, 
ever changing and oft taken down 
and moved forward. It is the figure 
of the changing wilderness, the pil- 
grim life and constant movement. 
This is not our rest. This is no place 
for great cathedrals and splendid 



428 ENLARGED WORK 

establishments and ecclesiastical 
states but continual advance and 
ceaseless aggression. It is to be 
feared that splendid churches have 
been the greatest curse of the 
church. As long as the early Chris- 
tians met in humble upper rooms, 
they had the power of God and god- 
liness, but when they began to imi- 
tate the splendor of the world and 
yie with the architecture of imperial 
palaces and heathen temples, the 
Holy Spirit took His flight, and the 
world and the devil became para- 
mount. The days of the Jewish 
tabernacle were better days than 
those of Solomon's temple. The be- 
ginning of this work was in a hum- 
ble tent ; let us never forget the tent 



ENLARGED WORK 429 

spirit or lose the pilgrim spirit. 
''Enlarge the place of thy tent." 
He does not say get a temple, but a 
bigger tent. Lord help us to enlarge 
but never leave our tents. 

ni. DIVINE RESOURCES. 

" For thy Maker is thy Husband : 
the Lord of Hosts is His name, the 
God of the whole earth shall He be 
called." This is the secret of it all. 
We have back of us one who has 
infinite resources, and He is not only 
our King and our Friend, He is our 
Husband. He has given us all His 
heart and all His glory, and He will 
surely give us all the world for our 
dowry and our inheritance. This is 
the secret of successful work, to 



430 ENLARGED WORK 

know Christ in this blissful and inti 
mate relation/ and to receive our 
work, by virtue of our union with 
Him, as 'the very frait of our mar- 
riage with the King of Kings. So 
may IJe reveal Himself to us all, 
and then, as His very bride, standing 
at the threshold of His home and 
inviting in His lost and wandering 
children, it shall be true of us, ''The 
Spirit and the bride say come," and 
the world will come to Him. 

^^How knowest thou whether 
thou be come to the kingdom for 
such a time as this ? " Like Esther 
on Ahasuerus's throne, we have been 
called to the kingdom that we might 
use our place of right and power to 
gave a world, God help us so tg 



ENLARGED WORK 431 

win them back to our beloved hus- 
band, so to bear them for Him as His 
very children and ours, that " the 
God of the whole earth shall He be 
called." 

It has been the experience of some 
of God's children, and it was mine, 
to be called by His Spirit, in years 
of loneliness and sorrow, to learn 
very deeply the Song of Solomon in 
its true spiritual significance, and 
then, in this deep, sweet love-life 
with Christ, to be led into precious 
service for Him, and to find the life 
filled with most gracious f ruitf ulness 
and blessing. beloved. He is call- 
ing you to His bosom and then to 
His work, ^^ Hearken, O daughter, 
and consider, forget also thy kindred 



432 ENLARGED WORK 

and thy father's house^ so shall the 
King greatly desire thy beauty, for 
He is thy Lord and worship thou 
Him.'' And then, '* Instead of the 
fathers shall be the children, whom 
thou mayest make princes in the 
earth. ^' 







'^4^y!^^&^'. 



